My suspicion is that this lout spent his 15 hour delay sucking up the free champagne in the First Class Lounge, getting more and more abusive, and more and more confident of his right to be abusive. After 15 hours of this...was he drunk? Was he tipsy?
Did his breath smell of alcohol? Yer damn right it did!
If it's just a
suspicion maxalt, you certainly draw some very vivid conclusions from it.
What is wrong with trying to take the middle course - why didn't the captain take the man aside, tell him the course of action he was considering and try to ascertain if the guy was pissed or just pissed off? By taking such arbitrary action the captain has brought a lot of bad press (deserved or not) onto his airline and started a 'them and us' slanging match between the pilot and SLF PPRuNe community.