Tag Archives for alcohol.
Perhaps afraid that someone somewhere actually flying the airline might get value from the SkyMiles program they’ve now devalued even using Skypesos in Delta Air Lines Sky Clubs as well.
Spending points for alcohol in their clubs has gotten 30% more expensive.
Video circulating in social media shows a man being denied boarding on an American Airlines flight at Dallas – Fort Worth because he’s reportedly drunk. He complains that he’s trying to fly to see his fiance, slurring his words about a non-refundable ticket and asking over and over “why I can’t go?”
He eventually gives up, realizing he won’t be allowed to board. It’s an incident in 3 acts, and three videos. The first shows the confrontation with the gate agent. The second shows him hunched over his carry on near gate A9. And the third shows him being taken away by police.
Doug Parker says that American Airlines has been investigating 1 in every 300,000 passengers for an airline ban – about two people per day that they “have to decide if they can ever fly American Airlines or not.” That’s a five-fold increase.
Chief Operating Officer David Seymour shared the plan for what’s next: getting government to crack down on airport alcohol sales.
There won’t be any cocktails in coach on American Airlines, at least until 2022. And you can blame the Biden administration’s transportation mask mandate for that.
American Airlines CEO knows that the federal mask mandate – which he lobbied for – is causing most of the problems on airplanes today. American won’t service alcohol in coach until September 13th when the mask mandate expires. But he’s frustrated. He doesn’t know what else to know. So the airline is trying to stop ‘to go’ sales of alcohol in airports and trying to get more abusive customers prosecuted.
At an American Airlines employee question and answer session mid-month, a recording of which was reviewed by View From The Wing, a flight attendant asked CEO Doug Parker about unruly passengers and blamed alcohol – not the alcohol on planes, because American hasn’t been serving alcohol in coach, but the alcohol that passengers have been bringing onto the aircraft themselves.
And the crewmember suggested that American’s move to have just a single agent at each gate to board aircraft makes it tougher to notice and do something about these passengers who are breaking the law and causing incidents inflight before they get onto the plane.
According to American Airlines CEO Doug Parker, in a meeting with flight attendants (a recording of which was reviewed by View From The Wing), alcohol will be back in economy cabins starting September 13th. Parker tied bringing booze back in economy to the end of the federal mask mandate.
CBS This Morning Saturday co-host Dana Jacobson happened to be on board Delta flight DL1131 from Los Angeles to New York JFK on Thursday when the Boeing 757 was forced to divert to Detroit due to a raucous passenger reportedly drinking their own alcohol. She live-tweeted the experience, from people coming on board to the whole plane being offloaded, and captured video of the passenger being removed on a stretcher.
As the passenger is being taken off the plane she yells, “Did I get physical with anybody on the flight?” as though that would be the only justification for taking her off. Apparently she wanted the crew and law enforcement to wait for their drunk passenger to actually do harm before reacting to the situation.
Flight attendants union head Sara Nelson is calling for a federal ban on inflight alcohol. It’s a movement that has a long history, dating to efforts for such a ban by segregationist Strom Thurmond in the mid-1950s, making many of the same arguments then that she makes today.
American Airlines and Southwest Airlines have delayed the return of alcohol to their flights, ostensibly because of poor behaving passengers – although they’ve behaving badly while also not being served alcohol inflight so it seems an odd connection to make. American Airlines continues to serve alcohol in first class.
Facing a call by the international head of their flight attendants union for federal action to ban alcohol during air travel, United Airlines has joined the mix in a rather odd way.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
