Yet Another British Airways Flight is Cancelled After the Cabin Crew Got So Drunk On a Luxury Layover, They Ended Up Being Suspended

A British Airways flight from Barbados to London Heathrow had to be cancelled at the last minute on Saturday afternoon after the airline rushed to stand down the entire crew of up to 10 flight attendants after staff at their luxury layover hotel complained of serious inappropriate and drunken behavior.

The flight attendants had been on an overnight layover last Friday night at an all-inclusive resort where they had access to free alcohol for the entire evening. Some of the crew got together in the bar, where festivities soon got out of control.

According to the British tabloid, The Sun, one of the female crew members became so inebriated that she ended up being sick in the bar in front of shocked holidaymakers. One of the male crew members was in such a bad state that he had to be carried back to his room.

With the group becoming increasingly raucous as the night wore on, some of the other guests asked them quietly to tone down their behavior. One of the crew members told the guests directly: “We’re British ­Airways crew, what of it?”

After British bosses at its London Heathrow got wind of the overnight antics, they moved quickly to stand down all of the crew members who were due to operate the return flight BA-254 on July 5.

By the time this had happened, however, passengers were already checking-in at Barbados Grantley Adams International Airport for their flight back to London. They only then discovered that the flight had been cancelled, although they weren’t given any information as to the reason why.

In the end, the pilots flew the plane back to London later the same day without any passengers on board.

Four of the crew members have since been suspended and have been flown back home as passengers.

Given that the cancellation was down to an internal issue and within the control of British Airways, all of the passengers on this flight could be owed up to £520 ($693) per person under the United Kingdom’s UK-261 passenger rights rules.

With the Boeing 777-200 that this flight was operated on, able to accommodate up to 235 passengers, British Airways could be forced to foot a bill of up to £122,200 in compensation alone. The airline will also be expected to cover hotel costs for the overnight delay, along with food, drink, transport, and other expenses.

This is just the latest incident in a long line of similar events that have plagued British Airways in recent years:

• Last August, a British Airways flight attendant was found guilty of performing an aviation function while impaired by drugs after he was found naked in an onboard toilet while under the influence of drugs during a flight from San Francisco to London.
• In January 2023, a British Airways crew member was arrested for being drunk and possibly even high on drugs during a flight from Gran Canaria to London Gatwick.
• In April 2022, British Airways aircrew were banned from buying an all-inclusive package at a luxury hotel in the Maldives after a newbie flight attendant was found collapsed and drunk on a beach at the resort.
• In 2019, a group of British Airways cabin crew was suspended after drunken antics at a layover hotel in Singapore, which was fuelled by alcohol that the flight attendants had taken off the plane.
• In September 2023, a British Airways pilot was sacked by the airline after allegedly snorting lines of cocaine off a woman’s breasts during a layover in the South African city of Johannesburg.
• Last month, a British Airways flight attendant flashed her breasts and propositioned the barman at a layover hotel in Belfast in the hope of getting a free bottle of wine to take back to her hotel room.