People do a lot to help stressed fliers. That can be up to and including full-time therapy pigs. But a bill coming before the Missouri State Senate could be offering the simplest solution of all: Booze.
Specifically, that airport customers would be able to take booze to go from international airport bars and drink said booze at their gate before their flight. The law, which passed the house with bipartisan support, wouldn't allow people to bring booze in from outside, nor would it allow people to bring alcohol onto planes.
This wouldn't be the first such airport to allow passengers to go from bar to concourse with impunity. Airports in Memphis, Houston, Nashville, Tampa, and Portland, Oregon, already allow the move.
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"It's been very well-received by our concessionaires and by our passengers," Nashville International Airport spokesperson Shannon Sumrall told USA Today. "There was a fear for airport police that it was going to increase drunkenness, and we have no evidence of that either."
State Representative Stacey Newman, who is probably alone in the legislature in having worked in in-flight service, said that the move concerns her for obvious reasons.
“I think the last thing that crew members or any of us want are intoxicated, unruly passengers at 30,000 feet,” Newman told Travel Pulse.
On it's surface, this doesn't seem like too much of a change. A drink is a drink, whether it's consumed at a blindingly depressing airport bar or at a blindingly depressing airport gate. We guess it's moderately more likely that people under the age of 21 will consume alcohol purchased for them by their unscrupulous friends. But how many 20-year-olds have enough spare cash to throw around that they can actually get drunk at the airport?
Nervous fliers, however, should be thrilled. Now you can drink your way from the bar to the gate, pausing only to discard your now-empty plastic cup into the trash. And then you empty yourself into your seat, empty your mind of thought, and prepare to enter the air.