Originally Posted by ScottyDoo
Individual responsibility and all that crap?
Yes, individual responsibility.... Although in the case of an airliner, as I believe you are intimating, it should be a
shared responsibility between the crew as the providers of alcohol, and the pax in question - its not like the crew were taking the alcohol to him and saying "we insist you drink this right now" - the crew should have (quite possibly did? who knows) explained the increased effects of alcohol at altitude and the requirement to drink more water etc, and then equipped with that information the pax can limit his/their drinking amounts to what they know they can handle. Yes it is also up to the crew to refuse alcohol service if the passenger is becoming intoxicated - infact in Australia anyway its the Law that they do - however everyone shows signs of intoxication in different ways. The unfortunate thing too is that pax sitting in a seat on a flight can look quite sober until they stand up and then subsequently fall over - or, as in this case, start/threaten violence and attempts to open cabin doors etc etc.
I don't believe the crew should he hung, drawn and quartered here, nor should they be referred to as "inexperienced" - none of us was on that flight, we are relying purely on information given from the media (and we all know how accurate
that usually is), so none of us know the circumstances surrounding this incident nor the experience level of the crew. Were this an aircraft tech incident and all the armchair experts started speculating about (insert relevant tech issue here) or making assumptions as to the experience level of the crew, I can gaurantee there is more than one person who would be jumping up and down, ranting and raving about "amateurs and their MS flight sim hours" etc etc etc...
Originally Posted by Sunfish
While you lucky little cabin crew ducks may get a break every twelve hours or so, us poor passengers often have to go the whole miserable 21+ hours plus at least six hours getting poked and prodded by security, immigration and customs without a shower, while squashed into an aircraft like sardines and being served disgusting airline food (with plastic cutlery no less)
Ah yes, because the flight crew don't get hassled by security (they are ever so polite and lenient with us - eg "Terribly sorry to inconvenience you, can you please just step through this detector, no don't worry you can bring all your toiletries/water/food etc - I know you have a 20 hour duty in front of you"). We don't actually stay on the aircraft for the entire flight either, we join it half way through via a teleport machine. We also have the luxury of a day-spa onboard where we can shower and get a therapeutic massage, and then we sashay off to a 5 star restaurant where we eat like kings sitting there laughing at the misfortune of the passengers you seem to think we hate so much...
