why do you get drunk faster when you're flying in a plane I'll explain it all
coming up
hey 74 crew welcome back if you don't know me my name is Kelsey I'm a 747
pilot my channel 74 gear is all about aviation today I'm here in
Santiago Chile it's a city known for having amazing
wine and this is the view from my hotel room Chile is a country known for having
great wine and the wine here is so great in fact in a lot of rooms you actually
get a complimentary bottle of wine depending on your hotel and that gave me
the idea of talking about getting drunk on planes there's a variation of this
saying that I've heard since I was a kid because my aunt was a flight attendant
and something along the line of one drink on the ground counts as two drinks
in the air and the thing is is that if you've been on a long flight before you
may have noticed that you get drunk a little bit faster and I've seen comments
from people asking about that so today I'm going to explain why you get drunk
faster on a plane let's get into it first and it should go without saying
but I'm specifically referring to flying as a passenger as a pilot obviously you
can't drink and fly we have a lot of rules about that and they're very strict
it's anywhere from 8 to 12 hours depending on the airline that you're
flying at so everything I talk about when I talk about flying we're talking
about drinking while I'm flying or anything like that 100% of the time it
is about while I am a passenger I just want to be super clear just so there's
no questions about that if you don't travel often and you're
planning a trip with some of your friends it's good to understand what I'm
about to tell you because the reality is you don't want to get on a plane and
they get super drunk and be that person that is annoying all of your friends a
while back I did an experiment for the seven-four crew I had no intentions of
getting drunk for myself I did it for you all but it was a short three-hour
flight and I decided to have some drinks on that flight to go see my friends now
I'm not a big drinker but I did notice that I got buzzed a lot quicker than I
normally would and I thought this is really interesting but I wonder what
will happen as we come into descent the bad thing about this thing is that I was
sitting in a row by myself which normally is good except for the fact
that I was now by myself and I don't know about you but
when I'm drinking I like to talk to people and since there was nobody to
talk to I started texting people so during that hour while I'm sitting there
drunk sending text messages during the cruise portion of the flight I started
sending all these messages which I kind of regretted but we'll say that for a
cockpit confessionals for another day come on let me see let me see what I
noticed is that once a plane started to descend and the cabin pressure altitude
reduced I started to feel sober a lot quicker and stupid because I sent those
texts but I started to feel sober and what I found out was that your blood
alcohol content your BAC it never changes despite feeling drunk or faster
your BAC doesn't increase so why is it that when you're drinking on a plane
you're getting drunk or twice as fast if you're not getting an actual increase in
your blood alcohol content something as a pilot that we learn in flight tool is
a term called hypoxia and it's something that we're cautious of in the event that
the plane was to depressurize you have a reduced level of oxygen getting to your
brain and your thought process is a lot slower that is basically what's
happening but on a much reduced scale typically your cabin pressure altitude
is between six and eight thousand feet and what that means is at that altitude
your brain is receiving less oxygen also that altitude the air is thinner and
that's part of the reason that you start to feel dehydrated when you're flying I
made that video a while back about why you feel dehydrated when you fly part of
it is the air that's getting pumped into the plane but part of it is the altitude
that your body's at if you're not used to being at that altitude if you watch
different sporting events you've seen players when they're at for example
Denver when they're playing football there that when they get to the
sidelines they need to put an oxygen mask on to recuperate it's the exact
same thing if you were to get on that plane and start working out heavily
you'd find out that you'd be running out of breath a lot quicker than if you were
at sea level if that's what your body's used to it is actually a combination of
the two things the alcohol that's in your system and your blood alcohol
content and the hypoxia the reduced oxygen that's getting to your brain the
combination of those two things is what's making you feel more drunk and
when your plane descends you'll start to sober up and what I notice actually is
that I felt almost hungover quicker it was like I was drunk quicker
and also felt hungover quicker because you're getting dehydrated at that
altitude if you're not drinking water the combination of not drinking water at
altitude and the fact that you turn to your passenger aircraft into a party
plane it's the combination of the two that make you feel hungover a lot
quicker now this rule does not apply to everyone for example if you were from
Denver and you're used to being at 5,000 feet you're gonna notice a lot different
reaction than someone that's used to like I said living at sea level or if
you live in a city like Bogota Colombia which is at 8,000 feet you probably
won't notice any difference at all because your body is used to being at
that altitude so if you're from either of those two cities you have really no
excuse for while you got drunk and started sending texts to people on the
plane if you like your martinis shaken and not stirred you're probably a fan of
the James Bond movies and if you haven't seen the Hollywood versus reality that I
did on James Bond Spectre I'll put a link to it right here I look forward to
hearing from you until then keep the blue side up