>I saw a video recently of a person who was denied boarding due to being visibly intoxicated. The process started with the gate agent offering to book them on another flight, and devolved into the person being banned from the airline. But they still received a full refund for their unused ticket.
More that a decade ago I was doing standards work in Amsterdam, after a long weekend of sitting in a conference room with 12+ people going over excel spreadsheets to edit a bunch of recurring text all over the place that was then used to generate the documentation / schema for the standards under discussion we were to catch a flight back to Copenhagen.
My coworker and I went to get a late lunch before heading back, I don't drink but he did so he took a big Heineken. Then we went to the airport. We checked in fine, and then we went to wait for the flight in the boarding area.
While waiting my coworker went to the bathroom. I decided what I really needed to do was some stretches because of how excruciatingly cramped up my muscles were from sitting for a whole weekend.
At the time I was in exceptionally good shape as I did Capoeira 3-5 times a week 3-4 hours a training, yoga classes, and weight training. So of course I was doing all sorts of funny stuff like balancing with one leg and the foot of the other held in my hand for several minutes, and going in a bridge pose, doing pushups, jumping jacks, standing on my hands, doing handstands and other stuff like that. My coworker was a long time in the bathroom, maybe there was a line.
While I was exercising one of the attendants from the flight we were supposed to get on came out and told me I would not be allowed to fly because I was obviously intoxicated.
Now I towered over the guy, I was in a bad mood from the weekend already, and frankly, he was just the most alcoholic looking Dane you could imagine, with a comical little pug nose red and purplish like the cartoon vision of a town drunk from the 1940s. So I nearly lost my temper at him, and was near to getting stranded in Amsterdam because of how irritated I was by the ludicrous assertion that anyone doing the things I was doing could possibly be drunk!
Just then my coworker came out and saved me, when he was told I was being accused of being drunk he started laughing because of course in Denmark a person who doesn't drink is already sort of funny.
So after some convincing I was let on to the plane. Later, after we lifted off, the little dipsomaniac steward came to apologize to me and as a way of making up for it said my coworker and I could have free drinks! He suggested a nice beer, or some wine, or some champagne. Anything I wanted! I said - I will have a Coke thank you. (but I was not able to do it without sounding annoyed)
My coworker took a red wine. He had laughing bouts several times on the flight back.