US Airways

Judge: State can keep US Airways from serving alcohol

Image via consumerist.com

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A federal judge has ruled New Mexico officials can keep US Airways from serving alcohol on its New Mexico flights after a passenger caused a drunken-driving crash that killed five people.

US Airways sued the state in 2007 after the New Mexico Regulation and License Department denied its application for a liquor license.

The Tempe, Ariz.-based airline argued that New Mexico has no authority to regulate on-board alcohol service, require alcohol training or enforce sanctions against the carrier because the state is pre-empted by federal law.

However, in a 24-page opinion issued late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge M. Christina Armijo found that neither the Airline Deregulation Act nor the Federal Aviation Act can pre-empt state liquor control laws.

A spokeswoman for US Airways Group Inc. says the airline is still reviewing the ruling and has no immediate comment.

Comments

Post new comment

Your name: *

E-mail: *

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Homepage:

Subject:

Comment: *

• Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
• Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <h1><h2><cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd><img><span>
• Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
• Images can be added to this post.
• You may insert YouTube videos with [youtube:ID]

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA

This question is to prevent automated spam submissions.

What code is in the image?: *

Enter the characters shown in the image without spaces, also respect upper and lower case.