Good point about prevention WCF, agree with you totally. Easier said than done though, alas.
Made a flight last week to a destination well known for the alcohol intake of it's pax and the trouble they tend to cause.
2 hours before boarding was supposed to start, I contacted the company's security department. Explained which flight I was going to do, explained that ground staff is generally understaffed and too busy with getting the numbers to agree to screen out the drunks. That I, standing in the door of the A/C, only see each pax for about 15 seconds, and that that does not give me enough time to evaluete their state of inebriation, especially since the catering tends to reload during boarding, hand-luggage has to be taken in and lowered via the catering door etc etc.
Could Security Services please spare me a bloke for 30 mins?
Well, the guy I spoke to did not quite laugh in my face. But that he thought the request was ridiculiou was pretty obvious, and of course nobody showed up at boarding time.
During the Flight Safety demonstration the FA's noticed many pax drinking from their own bottles. So instead of reporting "cabin ready" asap to the cockpit, I asked the pilots if I could have another 5 mins?
Luckily the captain trusted my judgement and asked atc for some more time. I then forcefully and in a hurry collected 27 opened bottles of booze from the laps my esteemed pax. They were pretty mad and I was scared as hell they would start beating up on me, but apparently I looked fierce enough to stop that idea in it's tracks.
After take off I went and talked to all the pax whose bottle's I had taked and explained why I'd done it. Doled out our own free booze at 30 min intervals after that, and the pax behaved like lambs. But I shudder at the thought of what that flight would have been like if they had jointly emptied those bottles in-flight.
My company operates that route every day of the week, and all the cabin crew, pilots and management know what the problems are.
I guess an FA will have to be severely injured before notice is being taken. And my biggest fear is that it's gonna happen on my watch.