TARGET MALPRACTICES: Is Air Travel Reaching a Tippling Point?

Target: Malpractices, Malfeesance (Premise)

Coffee, tea or …Hennessy?

It appears some ‘transportation consultants’ are currently leading a charge to remove alcohol from commercial flights.

Equating onboard imbibing with in-cabin smoking, their argument is primarily that liquor poses a hazard to health and safety aloft.

Such sky-high prohibition aims to put a cork in a rash of booze-fueled tarmac and inflight dust-ups and more serious altercations. Namely, the berating of flight attendants, as well as bickering, if not outright boxing with fellow passengers—basically claiming it all was enough to tip over alcoholic beverage carts altogether, for goodness sake.

For alcohol soaks up necessary oxygen, right?  Let alone all the disputes and misbehavior excessive boozing tends to propel: all told making it arguably as annoying as first or secondhand tobacco smoke used to be.

Problem is, those beverage carts are a significant airline revenue source, since passengers are not supposed to bring their own booze onboard, secreted ‘Mini’ bottles or no. Besides, a good many travelers rather enjoy a pop aloft, or at least feel they need some numbing to calm down, cope with the fears and anxieties of takeoffs and landings, of cruising in a squeeze tube at over 30,000 feet.

Still, for traveling teetotalers, this alcohol abolishment must be an intoxicating notion indeed, at least in terms of stemming social disruption inflight. But why stop there? What about caffeine jitters and jabbering? Shouldn’t tea, sodas and coffee be banned? Why risk serving possibly botulized meals? Moreover, given fatal allergic reactions, peanuts, any nuts must go; no more fatty processed snacks on planes, at that…

Really, off with those aggravating seat screens and reading lights, the hissing, thumping headsets. Don’t even think about combing through bin laden overheads, or starting those incessant lavatory climbers. Better just to strap everybody in by their waist, their wrists to the armrests, especially in coach.

Sure, buckle up, batten down, since air travel today is already so uncomfortable and exasperating—unlike the pampered clipper luxury of yesteryear. What’s more, there is an even earlier precedent and model for such calm, collected passage. Seems they were called coffin or slave ships back in the day…

So how about tempering that priggish helicopter hooey about temperance? For as long as airline cabins are cramped—there’s money to be made and turbulence in the air—those prohibition plots and planning aren’t getting off the ground anytime soon. Meanwhile, a toast to happy contrails… just keep your pants on and mitts off the flight attendants, for they’ve already got your number…