If you’ve ever spent three hours on a plane rubbing elbows with a bunch of loud, lairy men who’ve been drinking since before sunrise, you may well agree with me, says Imogen West-Knight.
The Case Against Early Morning Drinking
Michael O’Leary, the boss of Ryanair, is a man who seems to take an almost perverse pleasure in making the experience of flying with his airline as unpleasant as possible. Annoyingly, in coming down hard on people getting drunk before early flights, I fear he’s made a valid point.
I’ve never been one for an early morning airport pint, myself. Travelling at that time is wretched enough without slipping into a hangover before you’ve even landed. But to plenty of people, the ritual of a couple of pre-dawn drinks on the way to a holiday is sacred. I do understand, to a degree. It probably does take the edge off having to hang around the overlit limbo of Luton Airport before you’d usually have rolled out of bed to have a beer, and consequently somewhere to sit down. It’s a novelty to be able to order a drink at that time, and, like an office affair, feels transgressive in a way that has a little thrill to it.
The Problem with Pre-Flight Boozing
However. At the risk of being the fun police, anywhere else, going drinking at that time would be seen as grounds for a sit down chat with people who love you. We are, in this country, famously not very good at being reasonable about alcohol consumption. “It is my God-given right to get drunk at 6 in the morning! The nanny state will have to prise that Guinness out of my cold dead hands!” I hear some people thinking. But the unfortunate fact is that, as a nation, not enough of us can be trusted to drink just the one beer and then board a plane and behave with dignity.
If you’ve ever had the experience of spending three hours on a plane rubbing elbows with a bunch of loud, lairy men who’ve been on the beers since before the sun came up, you may well agree with me. According to a 2018 report from the Institute of Alcohol Studies, a majority – just, at 51 per cent – are with me that there is a serious problem with excessive alcohol consumption during flights. So, clearly, it divides the country. But then again, so did Brexit.
“It’s becoming a real challenge for all airlines,” O’Leary said this week, “I fail to understand why anybody in airport bars is serving people at five or six o’clock in the morning.” He accused airports of “profiteering” (which is quite a rich brew to take from the boss of the airline recently voted the worst short-haul operator in the UK) by serving too much alcohol to passengers, and then relying on the airline to deal with it.
Statistics and Safety Concerns
There are some numbers to back this up. The Times reported Scottish police statistics suggest that crime and disorder at airports has risen by about 40 per cent since 2022, and aviation security experts blame drinking for much of this. Stephen Wood at Leeds Beckett University said that “there has been a large increase in people that are drunk at airports and getting on planes. That is definitely linked to incidents of violence and sexual assault. An airport is the only place where you can find people having quite a lot of drink in the morning.”
Airside bars are not subject to the same licensing laws that operate everywhere else with regards to the time they’re allowed to serve alcoholic drinks. Airline staff can of course refuse boarding to passengers who are obviously drunk – not an easy task and a higher stakes interaction than a bouncer not letting someone into a bar. I have watched more than one person be denied their seat on a plane, and they generally do not take it lying down. There is yelling. There is refusal. There is trying to sneak past the desk. There are other passengers having to intervene. I would not like to be the person in the lanyard having to deliver this blow.
And if someone is three pints deep but holding it together when they take to the air, and then proceeds to get the cans in on the flight, that can create some pretty hairy situations. On long-haul flights, often for free. I enjoy a glass of prosecco en route to a holiday as much as the next girlie. But maybe we could go without getting on the piss before, say, 10am? At least give people a chance to eat some breakfast first.
