Michael O’Leary says Ryanair flights are being diverted due to ‘aggressive’ passengers who have had ‘copious amounts’ of booze while waiting for takeoff in the airport
Airports should stop serving alcohol to passengers before ‘11am or 12pm’ to prevent ‘misbehaviour’ on flights, according to Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary.
The CEO of the budget airline has called for restrictions on the amount of booze passengers can buy before boarding a plane, saying bars and airports are ‘passing the problem on to poor old dumb airlines’.
Speaking on The Travel Expert with Simon Calder podcast on Friday (July 24), Mr O’Leary also suggested policing the amount of alcohol holidaymakers can purchase in bars with similar rules used in duty free.
The 65-year-old Irishman said he would be happy to implement a two-drink limit on Ryanair flights as part of a ‘quid pro quo’ arrangement with airports to stop ‘aggressive, argumentative’ drunk passengers disrupting flights.
When asked if airlines should introduce a two drink 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.”
Mr O’Leary said stopping drunks boarding is difficult for Ryanair staff. He continued: “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.”
He then took aim at airport policies for serving customer booze from early in the morning. Mr O’Leary added: “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 to The Telegraph podcast that another measure could work: “But the critical thing here is we limit the amount of people, duty-free, can buy — [we] say, show your boarding pass.
“Why don’t we do the same but with alcoholic drinks at bars? [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.”
Mr O’Leary’s appearance on the podcast comes days after his company announced pre-tax profits fell by nearly a third as oil prices surged thanks to the Iran War. When pressed on the news, he remained upbeat about the airline’s future, pointing out passenger numbers were rising.