Woman Kicked Off Flight After Accusing Pilot of Drinking

GlenA said:
Wow, the responses at the bottom of the article are malicious! Good for a laugh though..all you can do is shake your head...
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I was thinking more like nauseating.
I hate pax and I'm soooo happy I never have to put up with them. You pax drivers are way braver than I, much respect:clap:
 
In a different news item on the subject a couple pertinent pieces of information that are not in this article were mentioned.

It appears there was a check made of the Captain (no details on how, by whom, or at whose initiation), and he tested negative for alcohol.

The woman was not the only one with that suspicion. She was one of three passengers who thought they smelled alcohol. She was just the one who spoke with the flight attendant regarding her concern.

The woman was invited into the cockpit where the F/O told her he had been with the Captain for the last seven hours and he could assure her that the Captain had not been drinking. The woman accepted and was satisfied with that assurance, and then went to her seat.
 
It's a shame you weren't there to report him to the FAA and get a REAL legal process started. If zu are not geelty, zu have nosing to vorry about!
 
Guy said:
The woman was not the only one with that suspicion. She was one of three passengers who thought they smelled alcohol. She was just the one who spoke with the flight attendant regarding her concern.
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Were they seated close together? Did they know each other? If not then there might have been a good solid reason to be suspicious. If they were in the same row then it might have been another case of groupthink taking place of reasonable suspicion.

Had I been the accused I probably wouldn't have stayed on the flight. I bow to the whole "Caesars wife must be above reproach" mentality...No matter how "right" I might consider myself perception is the name of the game these days.
 
Anyone who doesn't think it was ok for her to be removed is nutz. She made an accusation and it was proven unfounded. Guess what? You lose. The pilots carry all the liability and the last thing they need to worry about on a flight is the lady in the back who thinks they are drunk. Either she goes or the pilot does.

First the TSA trying to smell your breath now passengers too? Safer not to talk to anyone near the gate and just run straight to the flightdeck! Maybe someone should've asked if one of the three people who had talked to the Capt. had been drinking? Apparently they were all standing there together...
 
She claims that the pilot walked past her ( she was seated) and she was "overwhelmed" by the smell of booze. She said the man sitting near here made a comment about the odor and she took it upon herself to " address the matter"

Im no pro, but, I thought delta handled it just fine.
They gave her a meal, a hotel room and a ticket on the next flight.
 
esa17 said:
Were they seated close together? Did they know each other? If not then there might have been a good solid reason to be suspicious. If they were in the same row then it might have been another case of groupthink taking place of reasonable suspicion.

Had I been the accused I probably wouldn't have stayed on the flight. I bow to the whole "Caesars wife must be above reproach" mentality...No matter how "right" I might consider myself perception is the name of the game these days.
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The information came from this article (or one very similar). Doug posted one with basically the same information plus opinions.

http://www.11alive.com/rss/rss_story.aspx?storyid=149075

My guess, is that there was indeed an odor that the three passengers mistook for alcohol. A cologne, perhaps having unknowingly placed his sleeve where a drink had been spilled, who knows. I'd like to believe I would have reacted differently than the Captain did, but one never knows until they are actually in that situation. Also, there is no telling how the information was conveyed to him and he may very well have made a different decision with more facts or more time for consideration.
 
Maybe I'm the big blue meanie, but she made an accusation, the pilot went through "the process" as per procedure, depending on how she handled it after that point would determine if she'd be on my aircraft.

Personally, I'd love to have been a fly on the wall during the incident as compared to her potentially "highly sanitized" version.

Besides, what does vodka smell like anyway? :)
 
Doug Taylor said:
Maybe I'm the big blue meanie, but she made an accusation, the pilot went through "the process" as per procedure, depending on how she handled it after that point would determine if she'd be on my aircraft.

Personally, I'd love to have been a fly on the wall during the incident as compared to her potentially "highly sanitized" version.

Besides, what does vodka smell like anyway? :)
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That's what I was thinking. I kinda thought all metabolized alcohol just came out on your breath as pure ethonal; therefore no matter what you drink it comes out on the breath the same, mixed with whatever else your breath might smell like.
 
Doug Taylor said:
Maybe I'm the big blue meanie, but she made an accusation, the pilot went through "the process" as per procedure, depending on how she handled it after that point would determine if she'd be on my aircraft.
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Absolutely! I had this same thing happen to me once. A passenger stuck their head into the cockpit and told us she just wanted to make sure we didn't smell like we had been drinking. The captain's response was immediate. He told me to pack all my stuff up and shut down the aircraft. We had all the passengers deplane, telling them that we had been accused of drinking, and therefore had to go get tested. This happened at an outstation, so it took a long time.

Needless to say, everyone was pretty ticked off, but not at us. They were all mad at the lady who kept insisting, "I was just kidding. It was a joke." Guess she won't be making that joke again.

The whole point is that once you are accused of something like this, it needs to be resolved ASAP. Follow your company's protocol, and prove yourself innocent, don't try to negotiate with the accuser. In the end, that will work against you if anything happens.
 
See, that's what's great about the controller lifestyle. Knock em back all day long until the dots on the scope run together and not a customer'll complain.
 
Bumblebee said:
jello:D
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Oh those days of waking up wit dried squashed jello on your fraternity tshirt with flecks of stripper sparklies on your forehead! Woo!

Wait, inappropriate for this thread? Mods pls DEL.
 
3green said:
Anyone who doesn't think it was ok for her to be removed is nutz. She made an accusation and it was proven unfounded. Guess what? You lose. The pilots carry all the liability and the last thing they need to worry about on a flight is the lady in the back who thinks they are drunk. Either she goes or the pilot does.

First the TSA trying to smell your breath now passengers too? Safer not to talk to anyone near the gate and just run straight to the flightdeck! Maybe someone should've asked if one of the three people who had talked to the Capt. had been drinking? Apparently they were all standing there together...
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So because you think you smell something, if you are wrong you should be punished? What if he had been drinking? There are numerous documented cases and probably hundreds of undocumented cases of pilots flying with alcohol in their system. What we don't want is passengers afraid to speak up if they see something unusual.

Course it depends on how it was done. Chances are she made a scene. If no scene was made, and it was done courteously, I can't see the harm. Take the test, satisfy the company and the crew, and go on your way.
 
Given the way the article is written I would tend to agree that the lady should have been allowed to stay on the flight. But wait a sec...since when are news articles completely accurate when the sole source of information happens to be the party who has an axe to grind? While Delta hasn't yet responded to inquiries I'd say they are playing it safe until their own investigation is complete. This is a story where Delta has everything (PR wise) to lose just from getting the details wrong.

Also, I highly doubt the Delta captain was unaware of the PR nightmare about to ensue when he removed this lady from the flight. I would assume he had a good reason to remove her other than "who cares about safety? she could have ruined my career!". If there is more to this story than presented in the news articles it would not be the first time an unruly passenger was removed from a flight before departure.....
 
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