Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, has called for airports to be banned from serving alcohol to passengers before 11am or 12pm to tackle rising 'misbehaviour' on flights. Speaking on The Travel Expert with Simon Calder podcast on Friday, July 24, the 65-year-old Irishman said bars and airports are 'passing the problem on to poor old dumb airlines'.
Two-drink limit proposal
Mr O'Leary said he would be happy to implement a two-drink limit on Ryanair flights as part of a 'quid pro quo' arrangement with airports. Asked if airlines should introduce such a limit, he replied: 'No problem with it. I mean very few passengers on board our aircraft would buy more than two drinks anyway, but if the quid pro quo was the airline's limited to two drinks? Done. In a heartbeat.'
'The real issue we have to recognise is an industry problem of misbehaviour, and the misbehaviour is getting worse. Particularly due periods of flight delays, you have people sitting in airports consuming copious amounts of alcohol,' he added.
Challenges in identifying drunk passengers
Mr O'Leary noted that stopping drunks from boarding is difficult for staff. 'It is very hard to identify unless they are staggeringly drunk, unless they can't stand up straight. Most people, even drunks, can pass through, show your passport and get onboard. And you have a combination, some cases, of alcohol and drugs, and they get aggressive and argumentative. In the old days, if you drank too much, you just fell asleep on board a plane.'
Criticism of early morning airport pubs
He criticised airports for serving alcohol from early morning. 'It continues to be a mystery to me why pubs at airports are allowed to open at 6am in the morning, serving alcohol. Why do you not serve tea and coffees until 11 o'clock or 12 o'clock in the afternoon?' He also suggested limiting alcohol purchases in bars by requiring a boarding pass, similar to duty-free rules.
'[Bars] pass the problem on to the airline. The airports don't care. They just passed the problem on to the airlines, and the poor old dumb airlines are diverting planes. Like it causes real upset to fellow passengers onboard. When you've aggressive people, they're shouting and screaming and drunk and disrupting our crews. Our crews shouldn't have to work in that environment. And our fellow passengers deserve the respect that airports will not be shovelling alcohol into these people, particularly during flight delays, copious amounts of alcohol, so that they can misbehave.'
