Flight attendants at rival US airlines are just discovering that their peers at United Airlines are sometimes allowed to drink when they are on duty, and it turns out that the Chicago-based carrier is now the only major airline in the country with this quirk.
To be clear, don’t worry. United’s flight attendants are most definitely not allowed to down an alcoholic beverage when they are actually working a flight, and therefore in uniform, but there are still occasions when crew members are technically on duty but able to drink.
Occasionally, airlines have to get flight attendants from their base to another destination or vice versa, and those flight attendants will be sitting in a normal seat just like any other passenger onboard.
Typically referred to as ‘deadheading’ throughout the airline industry, flight attendants and pilots may need to travel as passengers on the clock and at the company’s expense for a variety of reasons.
Typically, this is because of a change of aircraft that requires more (or fewer) crew members, the seasonal start or end of a particular flight, which means that the deadheading crew members wouldn’t actually have a plane to work on, or crew members falling sick which requires replacement crews to be despatched.
There are times when deadheading isn’t all that exciting… you fly as a passenger for a couple of hours and then immediately pick up another flight and work it as a flight attendant. In this type of situation, there would definitely be no excuse to drink.
But what if flight attendants are deadheading as the last duty of their day, especially on a long-haul flight? Surely, at this point, it would only be right and proper to treat flight attendants like any other passenger onboard the plane… Including being allowed to indulge in an alcoholic beverage?
Well, it turns out that out of the major US airlines, only flight attendants at United Airlines are allowed to drink when they are deadheading and not expected to work the same day.
There are, of course, some rules. For example, flight attendants can’t be uniform, and the door to the plane must be shut with everything ready to go before they take their first sip… just in case something crops up and they are suddenly expected to work on the flight.
Some of United’s biggest rivals, such as Delta, also allowed flight attendants to drink during deadheading ‘segments’ as well, but, for whatever reason, these kinds of sensible privileges were eroded over the years.
There are even some airlines that require flight attendants to deadhead in uniform, even when they are on the last flight of their day.
United might be the exception in the United States, but the rules differ considerably around the world. Even across the northern border, Air Canada flight attendants are allowed to drink while deadheading under the same conditions as United’s flight attendants.
The rules are pretty similar throughout Europe and even the Middle East.
One of the reasons why US airlines are less likely to offer this perk, though, is because they operate large domestic networks, which can often see flight attendants reassigned at a moment’s notice.
If you allow flight attendants to drink during a deadhead segment, then you lose the ability to assign them to another flight where they might be needed at the last minute.
