In the US (for what it is worth...), the airline managements only want to severely punish anyone whose actions create any sort of negative publicity for the airline, no matter what the reason, and the FAA can and will do anything to justify its over-bloated bureaucracy. Never mind hoping that any airlines can be motivated to try to better clarify how much alcohol any person, i.e. 170 lbs, can legally consume about xy hours before departure time! However, if a member of the Board of Directors was found by airport security to have a 'smoking' pipe when traveling out west, then not even a wrist was slapped..................................................... ..................
Remember, many airlines and the FAA are run by lawyers/barristers/solicitors (or CPAs), not people who initially had any interest in airline operations or aviation.
Don't forget that in many hotels, various anonymous airline employees (staff) or airline mgmt types can be sitting next to you in the bar-sometimes a few passengers who you just flew in. They can recognize us from quite a distance, even in street clothes! I have recognized several unfamiliar pilots here in casual clothing, just by the way they walk through Clark Tower parking lot on a layover, and have chatted with them just to prove it!
Many people in the hotel/restaurant industry have a grudge against all airline pilots, many of whom have often overheard very loose talk and worse, distorted rumours, about salaries (one airline here pays lots of overtime so pilots working on multiple "days off" can pay for two ex-wives, or furniture for the home, which had almost none...), total days off, homes, boats, cars and the well-known fact that all of us earn huge salaries and only sit there and push buttons, which requires no systems, FOM, weather or other procedural knowledge, judgement and the ability to often coordinate many things at once in crappy weather etc.
