Would this happen in Europe aswell?

Lustrum

Basically, a passenger suggested a crew member might still be drunk leading to drug tests, delays, and the passenger not being allowed board the flight in the end. I'm just wondering would European authorities/airlines take what appears to be a throwaway comment so seriously? I'm aware of the legal limits for alcohol levels in the system, but who would be responsible for administering such a test?

The report is below:

A U.S. Airways flight out of Des Moines was delayed four hours Saturday after a passenger made a comment that the crew had been drinking.

Glenn Clark of Waterloo was supposed to be in Miami this afternoon at about 2 p.m. Eastern time. Instead, he and his wife arrived there about 9:15 p.m.

“It turned out to be a heck of a long day for us,” he said.

Tina Swail, spokeswoman for U.S. Airways, said the flight to Charlotte, N.C., scheduled to leave at 7 a.m. was originally delayed for two hours because the inbound flight from the night before the crew had been on arrived late. The crew’s rest contract and other rules required the two-hour delay, she said.

Clark and his wife arrived at the Des Moines Airport about 5:15 a.m. for their early morning flight. They even spent the night here in Des Moines. At about 7:30 this morning, they received word their flight had been delayed.

As they were boarding, he heard one of the passengers ask the crew if they had partied too much the night before. The passengers laughed, and they continued boarding.

“He said it jokingly, and I didn’t really think much of it, personally,” he said.

When they got on the flight, the pilot made an announcement that the crew would be taking a drug test because of what the passenger had said. Then they waited, for an hour and a half, and eventually deplaned while the test was administered.

It wasn’t until the afternoon that the plane finally took off, and it was minus the man who had made the original comment, Clark said. He had heard the man was told to stay in the terminal and not board the plane. Clark saw him sitting outside the gate as he boarded.

Swail confirmed the reason for the drug test.

The crew passed the drug test and took off just after 1 p.m., six hours after the original flight time.

“Any accusation of this sort is taken very seriously and out of an abundance of caution the crew was administered a drug test,” Swail said in a statement.

For Clark and his wife, the delays didn’t stop in central time. Clark and his wife were held up in Charlotte, too.

And he’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning to see his daughter. She was supposed to meet them at the airport, but had to go into work when their flight was delayed.

Clark admited the man shouldn’t have made the comment. But he wasn’t happy with the way the airline handled it, either.

“It was bad experience for us today,” he said.

http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2012/06/30/flight-from-des-moines-delayed-after-passengers-suggestion-of-crew-drinking/