BOOZE and passengers is an odd mix for us flight attendants.
I'm happy for people to have a good time – after all, they've paid hard earned money for their tickets, it's their flight as well, it's not just for us to get them from A to B and tell them what to do.
However, sometimes it can be a bit too much and it's hard for some passengers to understand why we have to draw a line.
I've been working a flight attendant in a top airline for the last ten years and in a weekly blog for Sun Online Travel, I'm revealing little-known secrets about the job.
This week, I'll be talking about why those boozy party flights you see to places like Ibiza aren't funny at all, and could easily turn very serious.
I really felt for the cabin crew of a flight last month,when a bunch of influencers and TikTok creators were being flown out to the Balearic Islands by Spotify for a bunch of parties.
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Most of the passengers on board couldn't wait until they landed and one started necking Jack Daniels while another jumped up and down on the small seats.
Others started swinging from the chair heads in the aisleand some were jumping up and down on the flight – it was total chaos.
While the crew tried their best to carry on as usual, flight attendants are in a safety critical role and from a safety aspect, that plane was very dangerous.
One of the main problems I could see right away was that communication between the cabin crew would definitely be affected.
One of the flight attendants was walking up and down the aisle, but there might be another crew member at the back maybe trying to get her attention.
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Because so much is going on, the visibility will be reduced and that could easily lead to further problems. Communication is vital between crew members and we need to be able to see each other all the time.
If we can't, something awful could happen and we wouldn't be able to act in time.
That might not even necessarily be something to do with the party either. The drinking and dancing could be the perfect distraction for someone else with much more sinister ideas to carry out something much worse.
That's a worst case scenario, but you absolutely never know what's going to happen.
The party could also lead to damage to the aircraft because they were hitting the seats, hitting the doors and hitting the Windows.
You just don't know how people react with alcohol in that situation.
People of course are entitled to have a bit of fun – it's always five o'clock in the air some say – but it's a very dangerous operation that we're handling and it's bad when people just don't understand that.
You could see that people were here, there and everywhere. They weren't in allocated seats, which isn't really safe.
If we lose pressure in the cabin, what we're told to do is literally grab a mask and sit down, whereas if you're intoxicated and not where you're supposed to be, getting back to your seat could cause chaos.
Especially if everyone's up on their feet, imagine everyone rushing back at the same time down the aisle.
When the oxygen deploys, there's also the chance people might go into panic mode, which makes things even worse.
When these situations arise, and things start becoming a problem, that's when we would have to start saying that this is not going to happen anymore.
We'll get the captain to put the seatbelt sign on because that is an official airline rule that you have to abide by as passengers.
You accept the terms and conditions when you book your place on the plane. If you didn't adhere to that then obviously further punishments could also be introduced.
It could be anything from a quiet word at the end of the flight from the captain to a ban from the airline, which might leave you stranded at your destination. But it's definitely not worth the risk.
What I would stress about this story however is that it's not just young people in economy class who behave like this – they're far from the only offenders.
We've had plenty of well-off older people in business and even first classes getting too excited with the champagne.
That was one of the things that really surprised me when I started working as a flight attendant, just how many people treat the flight as a night out.
And a lot of people just don't know their own limits. It's really quite terrifying sometimes, not just when things get raucous.
There's also plenty of times when people have had a few to calm their nerves about the journey and ended up passing out.
If there were to an emergency on board the plane, those peoplecould find themselves in huge trouble.
So if you're going to have a drink on your next flight, please think about how it could affect you because it's us that will have to deal with it if you don't – and we can't look after absolutely everyone in an emergency, it's just not possible.
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