Southwest Airlines has further extended the suspension of alcohol sales onboard its flights due to the spread of Omicron. Instead of February 2022, the plan is now for alcohol sales to resume early in the second quarter of this year.
No alcohol on Southwest flights yet
The world’s biggest low-cost airline, Southwest Airlines, will not be bringing back onboard alcohol sales just yet.
The airline’s COO, Mike Van de Ven, said on a quarterly call yesterday that the suspension will be extended into late March or early April, One Mile At A Time reported.
The alcohol suspension was last extended in September 2021 when Southwest responded to the extension of the TSA’s mask mandate at airports and onboard aircraft.
This suspension puts Southwest at odds with other major airlines in the United States, who have all resumed serving alcohol onboard their flights months ago. These airlines include Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Spirit, and United, while American Airlines is yet to resume serving alcohol in economy class.
Why is Southwest delaying the resumption?
Airlines have been progressively bringing back aspects of their onboard service offering ever since they started ramping up their flight schedules back in 2020 following an major slump in demand when travel restrictions were first imposed globally.
Initially, Southwest had planned to resume onboard alcohol sales as far back as June 2021, but this has now been extended twice.
While the extension for February 2022 has been ascribed to Omicron, the extension for June 2021 was due to a rise in abusive behavior.
At the time, Head of Inflight Operations, Sonya Lacore, stated in a memo that:
“Based on the rise in passenger disruptions in flight, I’ve made the decision to re-evaluate the restart of alcohol service onboard.”
The masks are also a factor
As a reason for the previous most recent extension, which was due to end in the next few days, Southwest cited the mask mandate. In September 2021, Randall Miller, Southwest’s Senior Manager of Inflight Operations, said in a memo:
“With the mask mandate being extended to January 18th, 2022, there are no current plans to bring back alcohol prior to January 2022.”
One disruption was particularly notable
Southwest’s decision to extend the suspension of alcohol sales in May 2021 came just days after a particularly disruptive incident.
On 23rd May 2021, a 28-year old woman from California punched a crew member multiple times on a Southwest flight from Sacramento to San Diego.
The cabin crew member had to be taken to hospital for treatment of the injuries she sustained. Three of her teeth were chipped, resulting in two teeth later being replaced by crowns. The passenger pleaded guilty.
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