Nick - My point exactly. The ground staff should not have boarded these muppets. They were identified by other pax as being plastered at the gate.
With regard to point 3 below we
do have the absolute discretion to kick them off prior to departure and we don't know why that was not done in this case as
Tredwaezy has not commented on this. BTW Tred well done for keeping your cool with what you did have to deal with eventually and I bet the Girls did appreciate you!!
EZY would not prefer to have a diverted aircraft as it costs them a lot of money.....much more than the time spent on the ground looking for bags.
On top of that it will now be fielding a lot of corrospondence from the plane load of pax inconvienienced by a trip into Frankfurt. Furthermore if the Cpt declared a PAN into Frankfurt that has other implications for the flight crew, ATC, other planes on approach etc etc.....believe me it is easier to offload these clowns at departure.
Drunks should not be allowed to board a departing flight.... end of. I have to say I do agree with
F3G with his approach to this. The other pax rely on both the ground staff and the CC to ensure their safety/inflight experience is not affected by drunken brawls....it's our responsibility.
I have a zero tolerance approach to rowdy drunks as a #1. If they are a problem on the ground they stay on the ground. If they are not identified to me by the ground staff and become a problem on boarding they get off.....no more problem
Always supported by the flight crew and company as well.
Why would we want to take them to 35,000 feet where we have no back up and the only way we can get rid of them is divert and land?