Internet discovers that flight attendants can sometimes drink on board a plane

Airlines like United and Air Canada have policies for specific situations.

Mar 17, 2025 - 18:26

Internet discovers that flight attendants can sometimes drink on board a plane

When it comes to airline policy, the unspoken assumption is that crew cannot have a drop of alcohol at any time or under any circumstances.

Last year, a Delta Air Lines (DAL) pilot was sentenced to 10 months in jail over a June 2023 incident in which he was stopped from transporting a plane full of people from Edinburgh to New York after security screened a bottle of Jägermeister liquor that was "just under half full" in his bag. In April 2024, a Japan Airlines (JPNRF) pilot was pulled off a flight after a hotel worker called in to report seeing him and several other crew members drinking heavily in one of their rooms the night before.

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United’s policy on deadheading has recently come under fire (details here)

But while pilots in the U.S. are subject to the strict “bottle to throttle” rule that prohibits any alcohol consumption within eight hours of the flight, there are certain situations in which flight attendants can have a drink aboard the plane.

United Airlines (UAL) and Air Canada (ACDVF) both have written policies for situations in which a flight attendant is deadheading. The industry term is used to refer to when an air crew member is traveling as a passenger on a flight to get home after a day of working or transferred to the next leg they’re slated to work.

In United’s case, the conditions during which a deadheading flight attendant can have an alcoholic beverage aboard the flight is when they are on their last leg home and not in uniform; the door of the plane must also be fully closed in order to prevent a hypothetical situation in which the flight is called off and they are assigned to work another one.

Flight attendants
James Lauritz/Getty Images

‘The person was not in uniform but was part of the crew’

Air Canada has a similar policy for this specific situation and while Delta once also did, it eventually scrapped it over the optics. This makes United the only major U.S. airline to allow flight attendants to drink on board at any time although passengers have reported observing it on certain regional airlines — particularly longer ones flying to Hawaii.

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The policy also recently became the subject of some major internet attention after a few travelers observed a visibly inebriated flight attendant and posted about it. Many outside the industry unaware of the deadheading rule started posting about the “shock” of discovering that this was in some cases allowed.

“The person was not in uniform but was part of the crew,” a journalist writing for the Beat of Hawaii news outlet, wrote. “They were seated up front and, throughout the flight, had many conversations with other crew members who came to talk with them.”

The optics around this was the reason that airlines like Delta eventually scrapped the deadheading exception despite the fact that it does not compromise the safety of the flight in any way; it is entirely possible that United may eventually follow suit after the attention that a few recent incidents have generated.