Several Airlines Have Solved The Pandemic By Banning Alcohol On All Of Their Flights

CNN – Airlines including Easyjet and KLM in Europe, Delta Air Lines and American Airlines in the United States, and Asia’s Virgin Australia, are suspending all or part of their alcoholic drinks service in response to Covid-19.

It’s part of a widespread revision of the industry’s food and drink service to minimize interaction between crew and passengers and to ensure a safer journey for all.

With face masks already mandatory on pretty much all flights around the world, and new legislation introduced in January 2020 to curb anti-social behavior on flights, it’s another in a line of barriers — literal and legal — to getting high in the sky.

Many airlines are limiting drink options to water only. As face masks must be kept on other than when passengers are eating and drinking, it’s a way of ensuring passengers are lingering over their refreshments for no longer than necessary.

As America reopens despite several states clocking their highest COVID-19 hospitalization and infection rates since the pandemic started, there are still a lot of questions left to be answered. Should people really be maskless at the gym, one of the highest risks of infection due to the beautifully named “virus spew”? Is it possible that air conditioning will make the summer’s spread of the virus even worse? Are you going to have to sign waivers everywhere in case you get the virus at a store or your own office?

And now, thankfully, the airlines have taken the guesswork out of one facet of a return to normalcy. Sure, it may sound awful to have no alcohol or drinks on a long domestic flight that you know will largely be a terrible experience. But isn’t there some degree of comfort in knowing unequivocally that, no matter how much the world has changed, that flying will be an absolutely miserable time?

It’s like comfort food to know that when you go to an airport today, you’ll be forced to take your shoes and your belt off to wait in even longer lines, you’ll be around crowds of idiots (many of whom will likely be maskless because, you know, viruses can’t tread on you if you’ve got your freedom) and then, to top it all off, you have to sit soberly on a flight while one of said idiots hacks up a lungs in the crowded contained space thousands of feet above the ground. So it’s more like comfort food from a terrible diner with serious health violations … but comfort food all of the same.

The world is changing around us, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s find solace in the old reliable: Oppressive air travel and getting absolutely blitzed in the terminal in the hope of blacking out the awfulness of the journey. If the rate of people not allowed to fly due to being drunk doesn’t soar as high as the planes themselves, I’ll be absolutely shocked. It’s the American way.