I think people are losing their sense of perspective here. In people’s arguments against, somehow, having alcohol served on board has become equivalent to having drunks running rampant through the plane.
What do you really object to - the fact that people drink, the fact that some choose to drink on the plane, or the extremely unlikely occurance of a drunk passenger screwing the flight up?
You want to know what causes the most disruption to a flight - from boarding and stowing carry-ons, to spreading general unhappiness during the flight, to delaying deplaning and causing extra work for the flight attendants? It’s children. Plain and simple. Whether it’s an indignant mother and father fighting the flight attendant as to how many bags they can carry on, to the child given the boarding pass that has lost it (and now eveyone waits at the gate until the child remembers where he left it), to the the piercing, Howler-Monkey-like screams that last the entire flight, to the small child kicking the back of your seat the entire flight (who will not stop even when you ask the mother, and subsequently the flight attendant to intervene), to the Juicy-Juice[sup]TM[/sup] spilled on the floor that is washing around your laptop bag, to the child who locks himself in the lavatory and has decided to make his last, final stand against the perceived injustice of the atrocities committed by his parents upon him in taking away his CD player. These are the true disruptive things on the flight. Yet it’s not PC to talk about them.
And don’t try for a minute to paint me as being anti-child, or anti-child on airplanes. I am most certainly not. But let’s keep some perspective here about what things passengers do on a daily basis to spread unhappiness and cause trouble - unintentional, or not.
As to the safety issue - it seems to me that the majority of crashes lately, especially international ones, have been complete, catastrophic failures of the aircraft. With no chance of survival. In my mind, the odds of a survivable accident happening are so small that it’s almost a non-sequiter to the actual debate. I’d rather be drunk out of my gourd when the center fuel tank explodes, or the US Navy decides to shoot down another 747[sup]1[/sup], or another pilot decides to kill himself by nosing down into the ocean while praising Allah[sup]2[/sup]…
sub No, I’m not saying that I believe that for an instant. It’s a purposeful exaggeration.
(2) This is unproven to date, although it is the best working theory that the FAA has. PC or not.[/sub]