Yesterday, one of our female passengers had missed an earlier flight. The 'Customer Service' Supervisor told me that her brother had just died in Atlanta, and she was quite drunk and upset, which many of us can sympathize with. When the police came to talk, she became irate and was briefly arrested. By the time I arrived for the flight, she had been watched and had not consumed alcohol for about five hours, sitting next to a companion. All I did was politely avoid looking at her while listening to the story, and then held out my hand, shook hers and gave her my condolences.
Had she not been arrested yesterday afternoon and kept at the gate, away from a 'drink', combined with an enroute cabin altitude of 6,000' or so, we might easily have either returned to the gate, or quickly diverted to Cleveland, Columbus (OH) or Knoxville etc. The timing of her outburst, at least for the airborne passengers and flightcrew was very fortunate-what a major operating (and note-taking, for legal protection) delay that would have caused.
Her only complaint when seated onboard was that she had nothing to 'drink', as planned. Do most airports have a trained counselor to help those who just lost a family member or friend?
