Listen up, proles: your failure to unquestioningly obey the useless mask mandate is going to cost you.  The surge in passenger misbehavior on airlines, partially attributable to mask mandate resistance, is ending steerage class passengers' access to intoxicants while airborne.  American Airlines has announced that it

will delay selling alcoholic beverages this summer to main cabin passengers due to the uptick in bad passenger behavior in recent months that includes refusing to wear masks and several assaults on flight attendants.

Fort Worth-based American Airlines told crew members that it won't reintroduce the sale of beer, wine and spirits to main cabin class passengers until at federal government officials drop the mask mandate aboard aircraft and airports. The mask mandate is currently set to expire Sept. 14. American was scheduled to bring back alcohol sales Tuesday.

Ruling class members can relax, though.  Those who can come up with the money for business and first-class seats apparently are exempt from the booze ban, presumably on the theory that the better class of people there can handle their liquor better or are more obedient to the pseudo-scientific mandates emanating from their ruling-class brethren.  Or maybe, if you pay extra, you get to behave a little worse.  (In the ancient past of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I dated a couple of what were then called "stewardesses," I learned that in their experience, first-class passengers were more troublesome.)

Southwest Airlines, like American, based in Dallas, also banned alcohol sales after one of its flight attendants was bloodied and lost two teeth.  But because it offers only coach seats, there is no class discrimination involved in the booze ban.

Seems like so long ago...

For the moment, Delta and United, the other two members of the Big Four oligopoly that dominates air travel in the United States (thanks to the federal government–approved mergers), still permit onboard liquor sales, a highly profitable source of income.

So the mask mandate is a twofer restriction on liberty, at least on these two Texan airlines.  Less oxygen for your lungs and less alcohol for your liver.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.