Questions and Answers

Hi Ben,

Last night in J on OZ601 Seoul>Sydney my wife and I enjoyed three tiny little wine glasses of white. Indicating we would like a topup, the flight attendant launched into a lecture on the effects of alcohol at altitude, and then asked me if I was OK to continue drinking!

Somewhat taken aback I affirmed and at the next pour endured a truncated repeat, where she said, ‘Are you OK to keep drinking?’

I politely raised this with the flight manager who informed me it is airline policy to do this after the third drink. I advised no such thing happened on our previous flight a day earlier, in First from Frankfurt. My wife and I are mature professionals (I am aged 60) who have flown a great many premium flights on various airlines since 1991 and we have never encountered this before.

During the drinking period we were chatting quietly and happily, and would have presented as sober. We found the encounter offensive; given it was fairly public and implied we were making or would make trouble.

Do you have any knowledge of this kind of thing happening anywhere?

Other notes: The captain on OZ601 on 15 July kept the seat belt sign on for the entire flight, which to my mind produced a safety issue. The sloper seat is horrible, as are the economy blanket and pillow. Service (aside from the above) on both flights was excellent, except we were never addressed by name.

Many thanks!

Julius Grafton

Hi Julius, I’ve never encountered this before. But, I’m not sure there is much recourse here.

As someone who has worked in the service industry in the past for many years, I can honestly say one of the hardest things to do is making a judgment call about when someone has had enough to drink. Obviously, there’s should be a bit more wiggle room on a plane since you don’t have to worry about things like drinking and driving.

But, with everything in the news recently (flight attendants getting hit by passengers, passengers misbehaving, etc.), it’s tough to blame the flight attendant. Perhaps she had training to notice slight changes in behavior (simple things like slowed speech, tone changes, eye contact). She must have noticed something in your behavior and made a decision based on that.

However, with all that said, it sounds like the way she confronted you about it could have been better. It may be worth sending a note to the airline and seeing what they say, but I would be sure to wrap the note around the customer service aspect and not the alcohol.