Alaska Airlines Faces $165K Fine For Allowing 11 Drunk People Onto Flights

This is a major problem. I’ve been on multiple Alaska / Hawaiian flights where the flight attendants just took a blind eye to major issues with drunk and disorderly passengers. On one flight, a passenger couldn’t walk down the aisle to board the flight and the flight attendants chose to do nothing.

When gate agents are pressured to close the door on time and flight crew are incentivized to start being fully paid, there’s little motivation to delay this for someone who isn’t obnoxiously intoxicated.

If this becomes a law in the UK, all UK airlines will go out of business.

Gate agents really don't have the time to adequately assess whether someone is fit to fly unless they are falling down drunk, reek of booze or puking on their shoes.

How to stop this problem? Two drink maximum of airport bars. But that won't happen.

BTW, the same people that had the funds to run up a bar tab of well over $100 never seem to have the money for a modest cash bail.

If it were to get out of hand, invoke a provision in federal aviation funding that airport lounges could not serve alcohol prior to noon local time. This would also include airline lounges as well. Each airport & airline would "scream bloody murder", but would cut down on some "passengers acting baldy" on jets.

If in doubt, the drinking age in each state was raised to 21 as part of a provision for states to accept federal highway funding!!

The lines are getting completely blurred with folks like this and being able to get off of the plane in the event of an emergency. Combine this with almost half of folks flying are medicated with gummies, pain killers, sleeping pills and drugs due to fear, recreation and anxiety. Do we need to start breathalyzing people at the gate or running field tests?

Having written policy for a 121 airline (31+ seats in the US) on this subject, the incidents would have to be clearly indicative of excessive alcohol. One thing that gets tricky is a gate agent confusing a medical condition such as MS which impairs physical movement or a speech impairment being confused with being drunk which could open an airline up to accusations of discrimination or liability. Gate agents are in a tough spot when they try to quickly evaluate if someone boarding is drunk versus other potential explanations as they aren't well trained in other possible medical explanations for someone's behavior. That being said, sometimes a passenger is obviously intoxicated. I witnessed someone unable to stagger twenty feet from a bar to their gate without smashing their drink glass to the ground and getting into arguments with three people including the gate agent as he tried to stagger to the gate. Never did see him on my flight.

Romania, Georgia, Czech,Latvia , Germany, Uganda, Seychelles, Austria, Bulgaria,Lithuania, Ireland, Poland, Luxembourg, Laos, Moldova are the top 15 for alcohol consumption. It’s clearly a problem, however I’ve never seen anyone intoxicated at an airport or inflight.

Staff would also be hard pressed to identify people at the gate unless they are on the floor and smell of alcohol. You can’t usually accuse someone of being intoxicated.

However, alcohol should at least only be served after midday. Why do people need it at 5am unless they have a problem?

Considering the number of the fat orange Nazi's administration who are severe and /or compromised alcoholics and drug addicts and the life-and-death power they wield over hundreds of thousands of Americans, it's humorous that the "administration" chooses to focus on Alaska Airlines

"....however I’ve never seen anyone intoxicated at an airport or inflight." You clearly never had a flight out of Manchester in the UK. I used to catch the 5:50AM KLM flight from MAN to AMS. There are 5 Priority Pass lounges at that airport that open between 3am and 4am to accommodate passengers taking very early flights. I witnessed many times passengers getting drunk at 4am and getting into flights completely wasted. No, I never encountered a situation a passenger had to be removed but have never seen so many drunk people so early in the morning. In my experience, flights out of Manchester have the most demand for use of bathroom while in air. It always amazed me the number of people lining up to go tot the bathroom on this flights. Oh, and many were barefoot.

I miss the days of functional alcoholics.

If the passnger has just downed a couple of drinks in the last 15 min before boarding he can appear totally sober but will be totally sloshed one hour later.

Not knowing the specifics of the flight but if you want to implement a zero tolerance policy here…. good luck

I bet if they made a donation to Duffy's road trip this issue would've miraculously been closed.

I feel like the world you think you live in does not match the reality of the world you do live in

I've flown Alaska extensively for 25+ years and I've never seen a problem with the flight crews ignoring disruptive or intoxicated passengers. Did you take the initiative to point out the problem passengers to them? I would bet you didn't. They've got a few hundred people boarding and they can't be watching everyone all of the time. It's easy to criticize behind a keyboard......

@TravellnWilly - I don't approve of everything President Trump does (and he wouldn't have been my first choice as Republican presidential candidate) but your comment shows the TDS is strong in you. Frankly, I love the fact that Donald Trump is our President upsets people so much.

“The FAA understandably takes enforcement action against airlines when they violate federal regulations, ranging from extended delays on tarmacs, to failure to follow regulations for disabled travelers.”
Actually, those rules are enforced by the Office of Aviation Consumer Protection (OACP) which is within the Office of the Secretary of Transportation, not the FAA.

Were these 11 passengers fined about $15,000 each by the FAA for their behavior?

My gripe is that passengers can behave horribly and even be banned by the individual airline, but they really should face penalties from the FAA, including being on the No Fly List

I loveww having TDS. I want more. It is an honor to be accused of having TDS. In Germany prior to WW2 it was an honor to be accused of having HDS. Hitler Derangement Syndrome. If more people had that. Maybe no war with Germany.

Hey, if Pete Hegseth can’t drink then nobody can drink.

Fine the passengers.

Seems like if there's no problem, there should be no problem?
Lots of passengers are awful sober. Lots of passengers are fine at various levels of intoxication. If they can handle themselves and aren't a problem... then why care? (and why single out Alaska instead of airlines that serve much more heavily because of their international premium passenger load?)