Air India issues new liquor serving guidelines for crew members

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Editor's note: After much criticism of its liquor serving policy to passengers on board, Air India on 19 January issued a circular to its cabin crew about a revised alcohol policy, effective immediately.  This comes after the Tata group promised a review of the airline’s liquor serving policy, following an incident where a passenger urinated on an elderly woman, allegedly in an inebriated condition, in the business class cabin of Air India’s New York-Delhi flight. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation fined the Tata-owned airline Rs 30 lakh and suspended the licence of the pilot of the said flight for three months.  However, it’s unclear whether the updated guidelines are applicable to everyone irrespective of the cabin classes. The earlier guidelines exempted first and business class passengers from restrictions on consuming liquor.  The specifics of how liquor should be served on international flights are left to airlines (we wrote about this last week), though the Director General of Civil Aviation has laid out rules on how to deal with unruly passengers.  What’s new? The new alcohol serving guidelines, seen by The Morning …