HERE's a story for you. Last week, the Consumerist published the account of a woman who was kicked off a Delta Air Lines flight after she asked whether the pilot had been drinking:


"A gentleman standing behind me asked, 'Did anyone smell that? It smelled a little like vodka,'" recalled the woman. "We all agreed that he did smell alcohol, but we didn't know if he had been drinking or what we should do about it."

The woman then spoke to the head flight attendant on board the plane: "I told her that I didn't know what protocol is, but I believe I smelled alcohol on one of the pilots' breath."


"He asked me to come inside the cockpit, where he shut the door and asked me about my conversation with the pilot in the jetway. I told him what I had told the flight attendant; that other passengers and I thought we had smelled alcohol on the pilot's breath.... He said he had been with the captain for several hours before the flight. I was satisfied with the pilot's explanation, thanked him and returned to my seat."

Twenty minutes later, though, the woman was asked to leave the plane. Delta told her the pilot had tested negative for alcohol. She was given free food and a hotel room and put on the next flight. Now here's the interesting part: Consumerist, a blog owned by the consumer advocacy organisation Consumer Reports, seemed to side with the passenger—at least initially. "Here's a lesson from Delta Airlines: If you think you smell alcohol on a pilot's breath, don't dare ask the flight crew if he'd been drinking; you'll just end up being kicked off the flight." But soon, a pilot wrote in to add some context to the debate:

Imagine I wrote you a letter, accusing you of plagiarism. Would you brush it off or would you make a serious effort to prove that your work is your own? And if I walked into your office and did the same, after proving your case, would you let me stick around or would you ask me to leave? That is the same situation a pilot is put in when someone accusing [sic] him of being drunk.

You should read the pilot's whole letter. It will definitely give you a better understanding of the stresses of the job and how seriously pilots and airlines take these sorts of accusations. Check it out.

Ultimately, I'm glad the woman spoke up. The system depends on people doing that if they suspect something. But the airline was also within its rights to remove her from the plane. It's just a tough situation. What do you think?