The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has proposed a substantial fine for something that can only be described as an unusual crackdown…
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Alaska Airlines faces fine for intoxicated passenger violations
The FAA has announced that it has proposed a $165,000 civil penalty against Alaska Airlines for allegedly allowing intoxicated passengers to board flights. This fine relates to incidents that occurred on 11 flights between February 2024 and February 2025.
FAA regulations prohibit airlines from allowing anyone who appears intoxicated to board an aircraft. Specifically, “no certificate holder may allow any person to board any of its aircraft if that person appears to be intoxicated.”
Details about the exact incidents that caused this enforcement action aren’t public, though presumably it involves situations where passengers caused disruptions onboard aircraft, and law enforcement had to get involved, or something.
The oneworld airline has 30 days to respond to the FAA’s enforcement letter, and it can either pay the fine or challenge it. In a statement, the Seattle-based carrier said the following:
“We take seriously our responsibility to provide a safe and secure environment for our guests and employees. We participated fully with the FAA’s audit of our policies and practices as it relates to intoxicated guests on board our aircraft. Since the FAA shared these concerns with us over a year ago, we made meaningful changes to ensure compliance with the FAA’s expectations – including enhanced training for all flight attendants and customer service agents. We respect the results of the FAA’s audit and are confident in the changes that have been in place for the last year to ensure our shared standards are being met.”
Is this a reasonable fine to levy against an airline?
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. However, often there are patterns to the type of enforcement action that’s taken.
The concept of going after one specific airline for allowing intoxicated people onto aircraft is interesting, though. Is there actually a meaningful difference between airlines when it comes to both identifying intoxicated passengers, and ensuring they’re not served more? Or are we about to see most airlines face fines over lack of enforcement of these rules, in hopes of minimizing the number of inflight disruptions?
Part of the issue is that nowadays you potentially come in contact with so few airline employees prior to getting onto the plane. You can check-in online, you’ll often scan your own boarding pass at the gate, and maybe you exchange a “hello” with the flight attendant as you board.
Admittedly this is one of the reasons it’s important for flight attendants to engage with passengers at the door, so they can quickly spot any unusual behavior, or signs of intoxication. But beyond that, with large airlines carrying tens of millions of passengers per year, is it reasonable to expect that some intoxicated people won’t slip through the cracks?
Beyond that, I don’t want to diminish the problem with being intoxicated, but we also have to be realistic — different people respond to alcohol differently. Like, some people immediately become aggressive when they start drinking, and if they drink to excess, they can act completely out of character. Then you have other people who just get happy and relaxed. I don’t drink often, but when I do while flying, I generally fall in the latter category. 😉
My point is to say that if I’m being honest, I’ve been drunk on a good number of flights. Okay, I generally don’t drink at all on domestic flights, but if I’m traveling in international first class, I’m probably technically “intoxicated” every so often.
For that matter, in domestic first class you’ll see some flight attendants refill an alcoholic drink four times on a fairly short flight, and I think technically we’d all agree that the person being served is probably intoxicated. However, if they’re not causing any issues, should we care?
Bottom line
The FAA is fining Alaska Airlines $165K over 11 incidents of intoxicated passengers between early 2025 and early 2026. While we often see enforcement action from the FAA over rules violations, I’m curious if Alaska is being singled out here, or if we’re about to see similar fines for other airlines as well.
Fines over intoxicated passengers are tricky, because when an airline carries tens of millions of passengers per year, it can be hard to always figure out who is intoxicated and who isn’t. For that matter, the real issue isn’t broadly the concept of being intoxicated, but instead, the people who become aggressive and disruptive.
What do you make of this FAA intoxication fine?
I bet if they made a donation to Duffy's road trip this issue would've miraculously been closed.
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 miss the days of functional alcoholics.
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
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...
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.
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?
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!!
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 this becomes a law in the UK, all UK airlines will go out of business.
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...
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?
"....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...
"....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.
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.
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.