[red-beard]

Yesterday, I did a quick one-day trip to West Texas on the feasibility of powering a Natural Gas processing plant with generators running on the plant gas.

I flew to Midland from Houston and returned the same day. I'm "1K" on United, which means I'm often flying first class. Plane was a regional, ERJ-175 which is 4 rows of 3 seats in First. I was in a Window/Aisle single seat. The flight is a bit over an hour while actual flight time of about 50-55 minutes.

The guy behind me would not get off his phone after the door closed on the ground. And when the Flight attendants confronted him, he said he was just "recording something" not talking on the phone. Which was a lie. And the FA heard him talking! And him telling his "boss" he had to get off the phone...

It takes about 10 minutes to get "In the air" and stable enough that the FAs come around. And landing takes about 20+ minutes of "prep" along with the landing. So, there is maybe 20-25 minutes where the FA are serving the drinks and "snacks" (basket with pretzels). There is enough time for basically throwing some pretzels to us and offering us one drink. The guy behind me pushed the FA to give him 2 beers. And when the flight was about to descend, he is pushing her for a third beer. She politely told him we are starting to descend for landing and there would not be any more drinks served.

The guy became belligerent. And the other FA came up and stood behind, hearing the guy go on and on about how the First Class FA ignored him and that was why he couldn't get his third beer. He said she had been treating him very poorly on purpose. After the mention of the phone call, he said "That was just a joke. Can't you take a joke?" He also said he bought his First-class seat so he could get his service. The FA pointed out she has to serve 11 other people in addition to him. His response as a "see, she was ignoring me!". And that when you get a First-Class ticket, you get a seat in First Class, not unlimited drinks.

It sounded like we were heading to a police officer waiting at the gate situation. The guy started to be calm down when he understood that we were going to be landing. And probably because he was going to get arrested if he didn't stop.

The obviously older/wiser FA told him that he is welcome to write to United about the incident. Because the FAs would be writing the incident up and forwarding to United for disposition. I know it is purely at the discretion of the FAs to serve alcohol to anyone. And I think I saw him at the bar in the airport before we left.

Thank goodness we did not have to wait to deplane because of the police. It did come close to ugly.

So, 3 drinks too much for 25 minutes?