As before on this website, I’ve rattled on about the unusual characters we call passengers who we come across in the friendly skies. Every now and then, we get one that I can’t keep from writing about. And this is a short tale about one.
 We’ll call him “Mr. Malt.” More about that in a minute.
 What was typically an uneventful flight from Orlando to Washington DC aboard a Boeing 757, ended up being good fodder for here.
 I was working the first flight attendant position on this flight in first class. It was a rather light load with only about 16 of the 24 seats occupied. It was only a beverage service, so it would go relatively easy.
 Once up in the air, I was working in the galley making drinks for my fellow crew member who was in the aisle taking orders and delivering  drinks.
 That’s when my colleague came back to the galley and asked me “what type of malt” we had. Despite knowing that malt is an alcoholic drink, I knew that my airline doesn’t carry any malt, at least not on our domestic operation.
 We laughed among ourselves about the request and chalked it up as this passenger trying to be a little too fancy for his britches. We quickly looked on our paperwork to see who this clown was. Because of his request, we knew he wasn’t one of OUR frequent fliers who pretty much know all of the spirits, wines and beers we serve on board.
 So “Mr Malt” settled instead for  Dewar’s “White Label” whisky -- on the rocks. He even had the gall to ask for “a double.” My airline’s policy is not to serve doubles because sometimes the drinkers can get out of hand and cause problems in the cabin.
 So we floated his drink with lots of ice and splashed in some water to make it seem like a double, a typical flight attendant trick to control heavy drinkers. He never knew the difference.
 Quickly, one drink turned into two, into three and then into four during a two hour flight. And it was obvious Mr. Malt we beginning to feel it. It got to the point where my crew members and I did not proactively refill his drink or ask him if he wanted another.
 I think he quickly caught on to our ruse. Suddenly the flight attendant call bell chimed in first class. And you guessed it, it was Mr. Malt asking for another drink!
 An off duty flight attendant in uniform, who had the “pleasure” of sitting next to him, looked him over, then at me while rolling her eyes. He apparently was getting a little too chatty with her, despite her having on her earphones to tune him out.
 He rattled the ice in his glass and held it out in the aisle, as if I was suppose to read his mind. That is one of my biggest pet peeves, when passengers do that, expecting you to remember them among 156 other passenger drink orders on a flight.
 So I looked at him and said, “I’m sorry, but I do not know what you are asking me by rattling your glass in the aisle.”
 “I would like another one,” he barked back.
 “Another of what?” I asked him. “I have not been serving you and my mind reading skills are not working right now.”
 So he blurted out his drink order and off I went to the galley to fill his drunk request. Again, I delivered him a watered down drink.
 A few moments later, the off duty flight attendant, seated at the window seat, had asked him if he could get up so that she could get by to use the lavatory.
 He told her she could “squeeze” by him and that it would be ok. She smiled, and politely declined his offer. She later told me she didn’t want him to have the pleasure of looking at her ass as she “squeezed” by his frothing mouth, let alone give him any excitement if she were to fall onto him if we hit turbulence.
 Covertly sitting in front of the drunken despicable passenger was a Federal Air Marshal, who also rolled his eyes over the entire  encounter 37,000 feet in the sky. I knew he would be ready to help out if Mr. Malt got further out of control.
 I finally had to cut him off, using the excuse that we were getting ready to land and that I was out of Dewars. Instead, he insisted on keeping his glass to suck out the remaining alcohol out of every bit of ice in it.
 So we finally land in Washington DC, and everyone had just about got off the aircraft. But low and behold, guess who was the last one on board? You guessed it! Mr. Malt! For a good five minutes, he struggled to get his luggage down the aisle between the seats, as if he was trying to keep his vehicle in a highway lane.
 My crew members and I just had to stand back and shake our heads. If I was a traffic cop, I would have loved to give him a “DWF,’’ a Drunken While Flying citation.