United resumes hard liquor sales on flights over 300 miles
United Airlines resumed selling hard liquor on Monday on flights over 300 miles, the airline told Nexstar. The return covers miniature bottles of spirits sold in Economy class via contactless payment along routes in the U.S., Canada and Latin America.
The airline said in a statement that the decision was made “in response to the feedback we’ve received from both customers and flight attendants.”
United had stopped selling alcohol during the pandemic. In November 2020, the airline announced it would bring back beer, wine and seltzers.
Some carriers, including Southwest and American, decided this year to ban alcohol entirely until at least 2022 amid a rise in reported incidents involving unruly passengers.
Earlier this month, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it had referred 37 of the “most serious” cases of unruly airline passengers to the FBI for criminal case review.
The FAA has seen an unprecedented number of unruly passenger reports in 2021. As of Nov. 9, there had been 5,114 reports, with 3,710 tied to masks.
In January, the FAA instituted its “Zero Tolerance” policy, which has generated proposed fines totaling more than $1 million.
As of late September, the FAA said the 2021 rate of unruly passengers had dropped by roughly 50% since the policy’s creation, to about six incidents per 10,000 flights. That remains more than twice the rate at the end of 2020.
