What is the most appropriate way to show your gratitude for a smooth and successful flight from one airport to another? It’s a subject that comes up with some regularity when frequent travelers discuss etiquette. On Reddit’s r/travel forum, you can read a lengthy debate over this, with some flight crew members weighing in. (One takeaway: chocolate is often well-received.) A Condé Nast Travler article from 2019 pointed out that this is completely legal: “Flight attendants are allowed to receive small gifts from passengers,” Cynthia Drescher wrote.
There’s one fairly big caveat to the process of dispensing gifts to flight crews: don’t given them any gifts that would render them unable to perform their job. You might think that this is self-explanatory; it is not. Writing at One Mile at a Time, Ben Schlappig has details of a flight crew gift that went very, very wrong.
The gift looked innocuous enough: a bag full of gummy bears that one passenger gave to the crew of a British Airways flight that made its way from London to Los Angeles. That’s a long flight; it’s understandable that you might want to thank the people resonsible for making it go without a hitch. Unfortunately, these were no ordinary gummy bears. Instead, they were weed-infused. Schlappig reports that the candies inside the bag contained 300 mg of THC.
It sounds like the flight crew was unaware of the gummy bears’ special qualities, which led to the candies being consumed in high volumes — which then led to, well, a number of very stoned people who were not expecting to be very stoned, and consequently sought treatment at a nearby hospital.
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Some new seasonal routes are coming soonUnsurprisingly, British Airways is now trying to ascertain which passenger passed along the unexpectely potent candies to its flight crew. In a statement, the airline told One Mile at a Time that “we sent a replacement crew to operate the return flight and there was no impact on our customers.” So, to review: if you’re giving a gift to a flight crew, make it something that won’t contain any unexpected side effects or result in intoxication of any kind. That is both good etiquette and a solid way to avoid incurring the wrath of a major airline.
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