Female Passenger, 25, 'groped airline steward after drinking pint of whisky'

[one dot right]

Do you have any brats?

I think we can take that as a no. I'm always amazed that people with no brats feel they have a better comprehension of how to bring them up than those of us that do

[Lemain]

.... it is after all an offence to be intoxcxicated onboard an aircraft under UK air navigation laws.

Not true. Indeed, any amount of alcohol will intoxicate to some extent and all western airlines serve quite substantial quantities on request -- a drink before the meal, wine with the meal and a liqueur afterwards. Enough to make anyone other than a heavyweight drinker to feel at least 'mellow'. i.e. intoxicated.

What the CAA does say, in its advice to passengers (which, let's face it, would be the definitive guidance used by a defence lawyer as it is all that's available to the travelling public) is.....

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/3/PAS_travelsafely.pdf

It is an offence to enter an aircraft whilst drunk
or to be drunk on board an aircraft therefore if you
drink too much before a flight, the airline will refuse
to allow you to board the aircraft. Alcohol has a
greater effect on the human body at altitude than
on the ground. Passengers who are drunk can
expect to be met by the police on arrival and have
their return flights cancelled. There have been cases
where drunken passengers have caused serious
safety hazards and the pilot has diverted the aircraft
to offload them. Penalties include a heavy fine or
a prison sentence, or both.

There is no definition of 'drunk' and the word 'intoxicated' is not used at all. The man on the Clapham ombibus would think that 'drunk' means some combination of being unsteady gait, slurred speech, inappropriate behaviour, vomiting,...and so on. Slurred speech or unsteady gait, by themselves might be due to a medical condition such as a previous stroke and inappropriate behaviour might be due to some condition such as learning disabilities. So more than one factor would clearly need to be present to confirm being 'drunk'. Smelling strongly of drink would make sense, as a factor, but it isn't mentioned, presumably because it is so subjective?

Indeed, the archives are full of cases where someone with a medical condition has been dismissed as being 'drunk'.

Motorists and pilots have a specified maximum breath alcohol level and that's pretty meaningful but there seems not to be any meaningful definition of 'drunk' that is accessible to the travelling public.

Maybe more scarey than a young lady who while tiddly makes unwelcome advances to a stranger, are those who want to bang her up in pokey for a decade. That really is scarey. Equally scarey is the possibility that a flight attendant can be so distressed by such unwelcome attention that they feel it necessary to call the Old Bill to handcuff her and take her to 'justice' on arrival. That is REALLY scarey. How on earth did the world become so PC? Is the flight attendant robust enough to carry out his duties?

What would happen in the case of a panicking passenger during turbulence or emergency procedures?

Does flight attendant have the 'grit' to cope, when the chips are down?

[flyblue]

I think we can take that as a no

You think wrong. I didn't reply to that question because it should not become personal, because it's not, it's just how it works: if you fail to give your children the right guidance or example, they will have to learn or pay the consequences.

Since it seems so important to some, then yes, I have brats that safely travel on their own without feeling they have the right to get intoxicated and "act silly". The only thing it took education wise, was to tell them that you are responsible for your actions, the bad and the good ones. Act responsibly, you'll be treated as a responsible person. Act silly, yoo'll be treated accordingly. It doesn't take long for a kid to understand what attitude is best.

I'm not trying to convince anyone, just explaining how it worked for me. Educate your kids as you prefer. But I'm not going to bear the consequences of the bad choices of others, be it the kids (if they are over 18) or their parents.
With three to five hundred passengers whose safety, security and comfort we are responsible of, if we started tolerating a certain kind of behavior it wouldn't take long to become unmanageable.

[Lemain]

I didn't reply to that question because it should not become personal, because it's not, it's just how it works: if you fail to give your children the right guidance or example, they will have to learn or pay the consequences.

It all sounds so terribly 1939.

[Juud]

Lemain, your position is that:

• demanding to have sex with someone and grabbing his penis and crotch area, is not invading someoneīs bodily integrity, is not meting out degrading treatment, but is merely 'silly behaviour and pretty harmless'.
• grabbing someoneīs genitals and demanding sex needs to be seen in proportion, and warrants the cutting of slack.
• being grabbed in the crotch is part and parcel of being a flight attendant, and a flight attendant therefore should not report it to the police.
• if a passenger gets a criminal conviction for sexual assault, and suffers the consequences of such a conviction, the blame for those consequences lies with the flight attendant and not with the person who did the grabbing.
• the flight attendant, after having his genitals grabbed by a passenger, has to think of the consequences for the grabber and not report.
  The grabber does not have to think of the consequences of her own action, and should therefore not be made suffer the legal consequences of her behaviour.

You have not offered a single argument to explain the reasonableness of your position.
Not surprising, since there are none.

What you have done is blow a raspberry & try some ridicule.
Seeing if not admitting that you are defending the indefensible, you now attempt to divert the discussion by introducing your own definition of what is drunk and isnīt drunk.
For good measure, you add the old mainstay of those who have run out of arguments, "when did the world become so PC?"

As another red herring, you also insinuate that an FA who does not accept being grabbed in the crotch as an acceptable part of the job, will somehow not be robust enough to deal with panicking passengers in an emergency situation.

Since you are the person who brought up the story in the first place, it seems reasonable that you remember the sequence of events.
There is no mention of the FA not being able to deal with the passengerīs unwanted attention.
There is mention of the FA being groped, and "‘Virgin Atlantic can confirm that the VS602 from Johannesburg was met by police on arrival at Heathrow and a passenger was arrested."

As you well know, an FA does not get on the RT to request police at LHR.
Such a request is made by the captain of the flight, after having discussed the matter with his fellow pilot(s), the cabin chief and the FA involved.
The captain decided that it was a police matter.

You trying to somehow twist that fact into FAs who donīt want to be groped at work being unable to deal with an emergency situation, again shows your inability to proffer a reasonable argument supporting your ill thought out position is this matter.

Since it clear that you are unable to come up with anything that adds to this discussion, the value of this thread clearly lies in laying out for other FAs frequenting this forum why exactly it is that we need not accept being groped at work, and in making it clear that neither airline captains nor the law will deem such passenger behaviour acceptable.

Your thread has served a purpose Lemain, even it is not the purpose you intended.

[Lord Spandex Masher]

For crying out loud. She grabbed his nuts.

Show me one man alive today who hasn't had his nuts grabbed by a frisky lass. I have. Once by a hostie at work, shock horror. Did I have a hissy fit and get her arrested, which I was well within my rights to do? No, I grabbed her tits and we all had a good laugh.

Where's all the fun gone?

[cockney steve]

Not 1939,for sure, as I wasn't even hatched then

However, my 3 offspring were given a sound grounding in acceptable social behaviour and accept the risks and consequences.

People seem to be getting very "precious" about their P.C."rights ;-

The male of the species has to supress his natural animal mating instincts and in modern society, it seems acceptable that females can flaunt and tantalise,knowing that social conditioning and pressures prevent any overt masculine response.
On this occasion, the female , discretion corrupted by alcohol! , went rather too far in giving a "come-on" signal.

A good dressing-down in front of the other Pax, together with a reminder of the sanctions available to the CC,to deal with non-conformists, would have been my strategy.

Many times , my peers and i have discussed the tabloid reports of schoolboys being molested or "used" by female teachers.....the unanimous concensus has been "lucky little sod, I never even got a hint ,when I was at school".

Get over it. Adults get drunk (usually 'cos sober adults over-indulge them ) deal with it in a mature fashion. Calling plod is a gross,hysterical over-reaction to a quick fumble from a horny female (as previously said, different ground-rules for blokes) If she's persisted, despite a stern warning, that's a different matter.

[Armchairflyer]

"Fun" is a mightily subjective issue here. As long as both parties find it funny, that's fine. But even though personally a) I'd probably be too lazy and not upset enough to take any legal action if a stranger touched my family jewels, and b) don't have a soft spot for stiff upper lip PC, I fail to see the fun in anyone getting harrassed and/or sexually touched without her/his consent.

And frankly spoken, subtly(?) "encouraging" people in service jobs to be good sports as opposed to medieval-to-1939 squares so that others can have their(!) "funny" way strikes me as pathetic.

[easyflyer83]

Further to my previous post.....it's all well and good us all saying I wouldn't take it any further and, whilst I wouldn't either, you have to respect the right of the crew member. He shouldn't have to deal with people feeling him up and if he feels like he needs to take it further then that is his right. We all agree that if it was the other way round then there would be hell to pay....and rightly so. So let him have the same right.

We know that there is a very good chance that the guy was gay so all you guys banging on your chests in a masculine way, imagine how you'd feel if a guy came and felt your cock. I'd wager that such behaviour would cause some serious verbal and even physical confrontation......on an aircraft or otherwise. In other words, your views would change significantly in that scenario. There certainly wouldn't be a "it's just fun" sentiment. Am I right?

[Capetonian]

imagine how you'd feel if a guy came and felt your cock.

That happened to me once on an SAA domestic flight. He was a very camp gay passenger who'd been drinking too much and had been chatting up male CC for a date on the night stop in CPT. He was standing behind me waiting for the toilet and asked if he could go in front of me as he was, as he put it: "about to wet himself". I let him go in front of me and when he came out he kissed me full on the lips and grabbed my cock in a completely deliberate action. I was absolutely livid with rage, disgusted and repulsed but managed to resist the impulse to deck him.

After about an hour I'd calmed down, went to speak to him just before we landed, and asked the senior FA to cancel my request to call the police to arrest him on arrival. I didn't feel it would achieve anything other than waste everybodys' time.

[easyflyer83]

That happened to me once on an SAA domestic flight. He was a very camp gay passenger who'd been drinking too much and had been chatting up male CC for a date on the night stop in CPT. He was standing behind me waiting for the toilet and asked if he could go in front of me as he was, as he put it: "about to wet himself". I let him go in front of me and when he came out he kissed me full on the lips and grabbed my cock in a completely deliberate action. I was absolutely livid with rage, disgusted and repulsed but managed to resist the impulse to deck him.

After about an hour I'd calmed down, went to speak to him just before we landed, and asked the senior FA to cancel my request to call the police to arrest him on arrival. I didn't feel it would achieve anything other than waste everybodys' time.

And i'm not saying that was the wrong thing to do. Your initial feelings were valid and you had every right to insist on the police being called. The fact that you had requested the Senior FA to call the police kind of proves that in such a scenario it is perfectly reasonable to feel like such action is necassary. Just because you changed your mind it doesn't mean everyone would do.

For what its worth I think you did the right thing but you have to accept that some people wouldn't be able to let it go. I personally wouldn't have batted an eyelid be it a woman or a bloke who did it. In fact i've mentioned before on a previous post that I have had my arse felt by straight stags numerous times in a bit of harmless teasing. I actually take it with a pinch of salt but those guys/girls/whoever it is run the risk of seriously offending someone and they carry out their actions at their own risk.

What I find annoying though is the "blokes view" that just because it was a woman groping a guy it is so much more socially/morally acceptable because as males it's a dream and all we want to do is fk.....and as a consequence the male FA had no right taking it that far.

[Capetonian]

easyflyer :

I have had my arse felt by straight stags numerous times in a bit of harmless teasing

It's all about time and place. I've been out with a crowd of mates and people mess around and do that sort of thing. It's not really my cup of tea but it doesn't worry me. For a complete stranger to do it to me under those circumstances was something quite different. I am not homophobic at all. If he'd given me a peck on the cheek or stroked my arm, or even perhaps given me a hug, I'd have been perfectly accepting of that.

One of my best friends is gay and we always give each other a hug and an 'air kiss' or peck on the cheek when we see each other. He would never, in a million years, think of grabbing my balls or kissing me on the lips.

Now, I ask myself what if the person who'd done this had been an attractive female rather than a gay male. As someone who is quite used to having women throwing themselves at me ........ no, seriously ..... If it had been an attractive female I would have been shocked and probably embarassed, but would certainly not have been angry or disgusted, nor thought of calling the police. To be honest I'd probably have asked her for her 'phone number!

Double standards? Sure. We all have them.

[Bengal Lancer]

such conduct aboard an aircraft (or anywhere else for that matter) is simply unacceptable. I have experienced two incidents where my cabin attendants have been treated in such a way and several more where pax were intoxicated to the point where they should not have been on board.

On every occasion I requested that the police met the aircraft and the offender was removed.

I personally will not tolerate this kind of behaviour.

BL

[easyflyer83]

Double standards? Sure. We all have them.

Absolutely. There would be times where I would be the exact same. Which is my point exactly. If we can have double standards, why can't that male FA make a complaint about what happened without fear of being accused of being OTT when a similar situation with a man groping a woman would not draw the same general response?

[Lemain]

Absolutely. There would be times where I would be the exact same. Which is my point exactly. If we can have double standards, why can't that male FA make a complaint about what happened without fear of being accused of being OTT when a similar situation with a man groping a woman would not draw the same general response?

Keeping in mind that we're discussing this as an academic case -- none of us were there and the only info we have is from the Daily Mail

There were two 'reactions' -- or maybe three, I suppose?

1. The FA's reaction
2. The Senior FA and Captain's judgement (i.e. involve officialdom, the Law)
3. The Magistrates who decided they did not have the powers needed to punish the perp.....who might now go to Crown Court for a decade in pokey (I'm sure we'd ALL agree that would be inappropriate and hope for a sane judge or recorder).

Finally, there is the potential sanction of being banned from flights. For a young South African lady who's life is mainly in the UK that could be a horrendous punishment, far, far, greater than your average holiday flyer.

The entire story, from start to finish, has fuzzy edges. Note also that she's said to have had a pint of whisky. Who served it or measured it? The people who objected to her inebriated behaviour?

I could be wrong, but I suspect that this young lady is not going to be any threat or embarrassment to anyone in the future -- she and hers must be mortified, I think? How many 'nudge-nudge, wink-winks' is that girl going to suffer from -- she'll need at the very least a new hairdo!

It's good to debate these things....clears the air and flags up how others feel. It's been a good thread.

[Capetonian]

Thinking about it, a pint of whisky at 43% is roughly 25 units of alcohol. The recommended allowance for a woman is 2-3 units a day. I do wonder if someone who drank 10 times that in a short time would not be unconscious or comatose, so maybe there is a little stretching of the truth in this story.

Oh no ... it was in the Daily Mail. It must be true!

[AEUENG]

So who served Miss Goldberg that amount of whiskey? May be she consumed some/all of it prior to boarding the flight or maybe served all of it during the flight, if the latter is true then the crew were asking for trouble to serve a young women or any pax that amount of whiskey.

I agree with Lemain's sentiments and am inclined to enquire as to whether Juud is Germaine Greer's PPrune alias. Life must be a bundle of laughs in that household!

[Juud]

Capetonian, also reported in the Telegraph, if that helps at all?

Ahhhh AEUENG, the old "I donīt have any valid arguments so I'll try to make you look stupid as a person instead". Most telling.

Some times, FAs do not have the required charm, tact and strength to limit the alcohol intake of potential problem drinkers.
Usually they do, and act accordingly, without causing offense but avoiding people getting p!ssed on board.
The times I have had to deal with aggression caused by alcohol, it has invariably turned out to be a case of the person(s) having surreptitiously consumed the contents of their own tax free bottles.
Despite our best efforts.

Taking nutrition through a straw for a number of weeks, courtesy of a drunk passenger, focuses ones perspective on the matter.

[mad_jock]

Well I got my arse grabbed by a 80 year old female in Benbecular while loading the aircraft.

She wasn't drunk

She said something in Gaelic which caused the rest of the locals to roar with laughter and her daughter tried to tell her off but I don't think she cared.

I didn't consider calling the plod. And when recounting the tale back at base I promptly got my arse felt by one of the engineers which to be honest was more traumatic than the granny grabbing me due to the fact I had just washed my trousers and they now stank of Jet A.

[AEUENG]

Damn, you saw through me!! Anyway, hope you are back on to crew meals now rather than slurping on complan.