Don't waste your precious first drink of the holiday on plane booze

Telegraph

22-10-2024

On a long-haul flight not long ago, I found myself next to a middle-aged woman who was seated apart from her partner and teenage children. I offered to move, but all parties seemed happy with the arrangement. It was soon clear why. At the first pass of the trolley my neighbour requested a gin and tonic. The steward had barely asked if she wanted ice and lemon with that before she had disappeared the drink, like a magician, and asked for another. After the gin came the wine with
During the night I dozed off, only to be woken by a curious jabbing sensation. I looked up to find that my neighbour was attempting to plug her headphones into me. I gently redirected her to the appropriate socket while she mumbled an apology. I went back to sleep, only to wake again to find her head conked out on my shoulder.
I reflected on the etiquette of shoulder-conking. (As with so many kinds of personal space invasion, it depends a lot on the individual doing the conking. Friends and family yes, Gillian Anderson yes, Bukayo Saka yes,
The airports are even worse. The lounges are awash in complimentary help-yourself champagne; in a regular terminal you are rarely more than a few metres from a packed
YouTube, Instagram and TikTok have given birth to a whole genre of videos, showing more or less hammered travellers getting into scrapes mid-flight. Some were drunk beforehand, others have achieved drunkenness in the air. None are edifying or inspirational spectacles. Watch enough of them and Cromwellian fun police thoughts will come to mind.
By now we ought to have freed ourselves from the excitement of drinking on a flight. This is not to be a killjoy, but to prioritise superior forms of drinking. If you are going on holiday, you are by definition heading somewhere with better drinks. The first drink of a holiday is one of the finest drinks going. Why waste it on a Ryanair, or next to a man in a tutu at Stansted?
There are few feelings more depressing than arriving at a European hotel at noon, already hungover from the flight. If you are travelling for work, surely you want to stay true to your behaviour on the ground. You wouldn't prepare for a meeting at home by drinking a bottle of sauvignon blanc before going to sleep in an air-conditioning vent. Why chance it in the air?