American Airlines cabin crew allegedly served fake fizz on flight

A flight attendant reportedly mixed still Chardonnay wine with carbonated water to “make” sparkling wine after the airline ran out of bottles of fizz.

According to the View from the Wing blog, founded by aviation enthusiast Gary Leff and billed as “a thought leader in travel”, a customer on an American Airlines flight was last week served a blend of Chardonnay and fizzy water, having ordered a glass of sparkling wine.

The incident was brought to Leff’s attention by a View from the Wing reader who travelled on American Airlines flight 3394 from Miami to Greenville-Spartanburg airport in South Carolina on Saturday 28 March.

“She asked for sparkling wine, they didn’t have any, and so the flight attendant faked it giving her a mix of Chardonnay and sparking water instead – telling her this was airline policy,” the blog post reads.

The original communication from the flier said: “I had two glasses [of sparkling wine] and then I asked for the third one and the flight attendant brought something that tasted bad. It tasted terrible and she leaned over to me and she said they are told if they’re out of Champagne to mix… Chardonnay and sparkling water”.

Not official policy

Leff clearly states that he does not believe the behaviour to be official American Airlines policy, claiming that “while I think the approach to wine American has taken in the past several years is terrible (it serves US$8 wines in international first class on a good day), it’s not that dumb”.

“There’s no way this is actually company policy – that the airline tells flight attendants to mix Chardonnay and sparkling water whenever they’re out of sparkling wine. I do not even need to ask the,” he wrote. Furthermore, he added: “If there were a service memo instructing flight attendants to do this, I can assume it would have been leaked to me a long time ago”.

However, he does believe that the alleged incident points to a need for greater staff training by the airline.

“Flight attendants learn their procedures as much from each other (galley gossip) as from their employer. And when they don’t go through recurring service training, just get sent memos, inconsistencies develop, including ones that are as nearly inexplicable as this one,” Leff wrote.

Bad wine spritzer

Calling out the errors of the flight attendant’s experimental “winemaking”, Leff added: “What proportions would you even use in mixing Chardonnay and sparkling water, if you were trying to mirror bad sparkling wine? It’s going to give you a bad wine spritzer, right? Thin, less aroma, softer acidity and basically just a flat, washed out fruit profile. If it were an oaky Chardonnay it’s going to be really weird because oak, butter, and vanilla aren’t going to survive dilution. You’ll get less integrated bubbles, no yeasty character, and more of a ‘something is off’ taste than ‘this is cheap’”.

In 2024, db reported that customers were outraged over American Airlines ditching printed wine lists in first and business class. Instead, the airline invited fliers to “engage with our flight attendants to learn more about the selection of wines available for your enjoyment”. At the time, Leff weighed in on the debate, saying: “Flight attendants, of course, have been given no extra training on the wines being offered. You can ask, and maybe they’ll show you the bottle.”

However, American Airlines claimed in a statement that it was only “a temporary change to the inflight dining experience while we transition beverage suppliers”, adding: “We look forward to bringing back the printed onboard menus in spring 2024”.

 

 

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