Coffee Crackdown: These Airlines Are Now Refusing To Let Passengers Board With Their Morning Brew

Imagine you have an early morning flight, and after snoozing your alarm a few too many times, you’ve had to rush to the airport with little time to spare. Thankfully, you find a coffee shop on the way to the gate and pick up your favorite morning beverage to drink onboard the plane.

But when you go to board your plane, coffee cup in hand, the gate agent takes one look at you and turns you away. It turns out the issue is your coffee, and it will have to go into the trash before you’re allowed to board.

This is becoming an increasingly common scenario at a growing list of European airlines, despite the fact that these airlines serve hot coffee onboard… and will often charge you for the privilege.

It sure seems like a blatant money grab – just one step away from banning passengers from bringing their own food onboard the plane with them and forcing them to pay for a stale sandwich that has been racking up air miles all day.

The hot beverage ban is not, however, designed to make you buy a coffee onboard, no matter what you might have heard.

The real issue is that passengers keep on spilling scalding hot coffee on themselves and their seatmates, and airlines are desperate to reduce these incidents.

Sure, you could just as easily spill a hot beverage at any point during a flight, but think about it logically. The boarding process can be pretty chaotic with large bags being swung into the overhead lockers and passengers trying to squeeze past one another in the aisle and their seats.

Airlines that have banned passengers from bringing hot beverages onboard include:

• EasyJet
• KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
• Ryanair
• Virgin Atlantic

And it’s not just about reducing the risk of scald injuries. Some passengers will try to sneak to-go alcohol in coffee cups, which airlines want to avoid as much as possible to minimize the risk of drunken and unruly behavior.

One way around this ban, however, might be to get your coffee served in a reusable cup with an enclosed, leak-proof lid, although be warned, some airlines enforce their no-drink boarding rule very strictly.

In 2023, Stuart Harris from Cambridgeshire called on Virgin Atlantic to only serve hot drinks in cups with lids after he was left scalded by a spilled cup of hot coffee when turbulence rocked his flight from Jamaica to London.

Stuart’s injury became national news after he won a payout from Virgin Atlantic after making a claim under the Montreal Convention.

He thinks that providing lids would massively reduce the risk of injury, something that some airlines already do for coffee you buy onboard.

Successive courts have ruled that airlines are generally liable for scald injuries caused by spilled drinks, so doing anything to mitigate that risk is clearly in the best interests of the airline.

Reduce your risk of a scald injury:

The number of times I’ve written about passengers, including young children, suffering life-changing scald injuries from spilled drinks on airplanes is truly frightening. As a flight attendant, this is what I would suggest to reduce the risk:

• Most spillages occur when the cup is placed on a tray table – make sure the table isn’t slanted and put a napkin between the tray and cup to give it some grip on the slippery surface.
• Have a blanket, newspaper, or some other layer between your lap and the tray table. If the cup spills, you can quickly remove the extra layer, preventing the liquid from reaching your lap.
• Airlines shouldn’t serve hot drinks when the seatbelt signs are on, but if they do, don’t take up the flight attendants’ offer. Spillages are commonly connected to turbulence.

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Do you know of any other airlines that have a drink ban during boarding? Let me know in the comments below…