The Auswine Forum

I spent most of my adult life working in the Travel/Airline industry so have had my share of experinces with booze on aircraft and was wondering if anyone else out there has had any interesting stories to tell.

The following are the things that stick in my mind:

1. I worked for Ansett International and as such I got to go a trip to Hong Kong with a bunch of people from work. We got upgrade on the way over and had a very enjoyable flight. Then just before landing all the open bottles of wine had to be poured down the sink. So the flight attendant came and got us and said we had never lived until we washed our hands in Champange. So there we were washing our hands in Moet (1988 or 1990 I think)....its very soft on your hands! Unfortunatly there were no first class passengers that days otherwise we would got to wash in Dom!

2. A couple of years latter I head over to Hong Kong again with my partner and again we got upgraded and drank 1990 Pol all the way there which made the for a very pleasent flight.

Hi Ben


My wife was a Flight Attendant. Often they would pour the leftovers down the sink whilst on the ground. Forgetting the drain mast would pour the wine over the tarmac resulting in a red faced, red stained engineer powering up the aerobridge. Usually appeased by the blonde hair and big smile!

Hi Jamie,

Usually appeased by the blonde hair and big smile!

Yep that would work........I gather she wasn't one of Reg's old crew.

I have a vague recollection of a flight to London on Qantas about twenty years ago when they happily delivered full bottles of red to frequent flyers or anybody vaguely polite. There were six of us and the bottle count was horrific and we couldn't stop laughing as we queued at immigration at Heathrow and compared the purple patches on our clothing.
I reckon that flight was quicker than Concorde!

Roger,

I think you have proved that if the company is good and the wine is on tap then spending 24 hours in metal tube at 30,000 feet isn't to dull an affair.

Then again it can be a bit ugly if the whole plane is on the act.....if Jamie reads this maybe he can tell us if he ever did the run to Bali and had his plane drunk dry?

One of the funnier stories I heard from a flight to Bali was a bloke who took the Melbourne-Sydney-Darwin-Bali mid-week milkrun. Because the punter was flying on domestic aircraft to Darwin where you pay for beer in economy Ansett used give drink vouchers out to international passengers. So this bloke gets 2 vouchers for Melbourne-Sydney and as 2 beers, gets to Sydney and waits for an hour of so and has another couple of beers in the bar. Then he hops onto the Sydney-Darwin flight and gets 4 drink vouchers so has another 4 beers and then has a couple of hours in the bar at Darwin airport. Finally he gets on the flight to Bali somewhat the worse for where and proceeds to have several more beers. About 10 hours after leaving Melbourne he arrives in Bali and is blind drunk so the Indonesian say sorry mate we aren't letting you and toss him in the cells to dry out with plans to send him back to Oz the next day.

Well the next day comes and they open the cell and he is still blind drunk and they can't work out why. Then they spy his now empty bottle or bottles of duty free and the penny drops. So he is locked up again and sent home the following day I assume with the mother of all hangovers. Well this punter was none to happy that his little holiday took such a turn and when he returned to Melbourne sent Ansett a complaint letter saying we stuffed up his holiday because we got him pissed and such he wanted another one provided. Needless to say he didn't get what he wanted but you have give him credit for trying!

Ben,

The other, not so pretty story, dates back even further. I was off to the US for a year, had a massive, siily party the night before and arrived at Adelaide airport (before it was international) the next morning feeling like death was a viable alternative.
To cut a long story short I was in the toilet chucking as we hit about 20,000 feet and returned for the descent to Melbourne, the ascent from Melbourne, the descent to Sydney, the ascent from Sydney, the descent to Auckland, the ascent from Auckland, the descent to Nadi and the ascent from Nadi.
Honolulu was no problem, I was over it.

David Boon and Darwinians the serious offenders in my experience. Always ran out of alchohol on the centre runs and the former on the short hops to Tassie!

Alchohol advances the onset of hypoxia. Before Air Rage a catch cry would climb until blue in the face to settle a rowdy cabin. An airliner's cabin altitude can be raise to an equivalent of having a few a few drinks on Kosiosko. Listlessness, fatigue and an awful hangover due accentuated dehydration the result!

The Flight Attendants told me the worst thing for a hangover airline coffee. They preferred the 100% Oxygen available on the Flight Deck.