crew liability regarding drunken passengers

[JOA]

what is the liability of the crew onboard when it comes to drunken passengers? if the crew is fully aware and allows an intoxicated passenger to board the aircraft then continues to serve them alchohol, after a few , cut them off and have them arrested? is is not partially the crews fault for not removing them from the plane or refusing them at the gate? if they allow people on board who are obviously drunk they take a risk..and to continue to serve them? it makes no sence, most passengers and especially nervous flyers usually have a drink or two or more at the airport. some get drunk to calm nerves. there should be more warnings as they do with lighting a cigarette as to how serious it is and what the consequenses are. its a shame that at the airport there is a bar every 100 feet, and its almost encouraged. the law apparently also says that you do not have to be disrtuptive to be arrested for being drunk..just being drunk in itself is fine/imprisonment worthy. passengers are allowed to carry on duty free liqour and are not told they cant drink it and if they do they face all kinds of problems. anyone got any offerings?

[GalleyWench]

JOA, With regard to being liable for knowingly intoxicating a passenger I think that would be quite difficult to prove. It is quite difficult to suss out the drunk ones during boarding unless the smell gives them away. If we are at the boarding door as many as 400 people pass by us, how valid can our assessment of their sobriety be? The few times I have encountered an obvious drunk, the pilots and ground staff are loathe to yank them off the flight. Also please remember that it is often not one individual serving the passenger drinks. I may serve a man 2 drinks and assume that is all he has consumed. He may have asked my colleague for 2 more drinks and sent his girlfriend back to ask for 2 more. If someone seems to be on the edge of getting out of order we will warn our colleagues of their condition. So with this in mind I think it would be difficult in the event of a drunk driving accident or something of the sort to hold the cabin crew liable. I agree that liquor is too everpresent in the terminal and that the law of not allowing an intoxicated pax on board is a good idea, but reality is that our colleagues are not supporting our attempts to follow this law.

[SOHCAHTOA]

I think to a degree the industry has made it's own monsters. I have worked in both the charter and schedule sector and found that on flights were pax are required to pay for drinks, it is surprising how quickly they learn to drink in moderation. On flights were drinks are complimentry they suddenly fall into this 'kid in a sweet shop mentallity' were greed takes over.

I try not to behave like the alchahol police when serving drink and dont believe the crew should be expected to make judgements on what we believe an individuals personal limit is,everybodys limit is different. However I do make a mental note of pax who appear to have one too many and if I feel they could be a problem, then we decide as a crew whether or not to continue serving them.
If this issue is a safety concern, then maybe its the industries responsability to make a decision on whether drink should be served on flights and not just expect the crews to try and contain the problem.
As for the issue of allowing obviously drunk pax onboard, it should be stopped. I have seen it happen many times when the crew have voiced their concerns about a passengers unsober state only to have their concerns ignored by ground staff (and at times the captain)due to the overwhelming concern about an ontime departure.

[man in black]

On liability....this is an interesting question. In the U.S. as you know, courts have held bar staff responsible for the actions of patrons after they left the bar. When the drinking takes place on an airplane - litigation material? If it hasn't already happened, I suspect some ingenious tort liability lawyer will soon think it up (probably in the U.S.)...so please be careful.

Its a tricky balance - keeping passengers "happy" in a competitive industry and having a nasty and potentially disruptive drunk on board. CX has provided the staff with some useful procedures to slow down or dilute consumption, but ultimately the problem has to be confronted.

Like anywhere, staff should have the right to bar a disruptive passenger from boarding and to stop serving when the person has clearly gone to far.

Frankly sometimes however, flight crew do turn a blind eye. Over the last, several million miles, I don't remember once when a passenger was actually cut off or otherwise handled. Two flights stick out...one from Ldn to SP on Varig, when a rather large and boisterous business man drank himself into a ill temper all the while terrorizing a young mother with her small child. It was actually the passengers who forced the man to stop drinking and settle down, as the crew didn't think there was a problem...and a second on CX from HK to Toronto when a business woman came on the plane drunk from a celebration, drank more until she was sick all over her seat, slept it off and then starting drinking again and was abusive to all around her, but still got her slowly- served and watered-down drinks.

In fairness, I imagine its a very challenging part of the crew's job, especially when the passenger appears to be a well-connected, frequent business traveller who can always take issue with the crew's characterization of the situation.