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Ryanair CEO calls for drinks limits at airports
Michael O’Leary, CEO of budget airline Ryanair, has suggested that passengers should be restricted to a maximum of two drinks before boarding to stop instances of “misbehaviour”.
The airport pint is something of a ritual for many flyers, regardless of the time of day, according to the majority of Brits. But the Ryanair boss suggested in a recent interview with The Telegraph that alcohol is one of the factors contributing to bad behaviour from passengers.
“It’s not that easy for airlines to identify people who are inebriated at the gate, particularly if they are boarding with two or three others,” O’Leary said. “As long as they can stand up and shuffle they will get through. Then when the plane takes off we see the misbehaviour.”
Stories of drunken passengers are a media staple every summer, with there usually being at least one instance of an aeroplane turning round because of someone being rowdy onboard.
O’Leary drew the parallel between flying as a passenger while under the influence of alcohol and drink driving.
“We don’t want to begrudge people having a drink. But we don’t allow people to drink-drive, yet we keep putting them up in aircraft at 33,000 feet.”
He did acknowledge that alcohol is not the only factor, and that other substances can make passengers act inappropriately and/or aggressively: “In the old days people who drank too much would eventually fall over or fall asleep. But now those passengers are also on tablets and powder.”
Crackdown
Ryanair itself does actually operate a fairly strict policy with flights to certain popular holiday destinations. Last year, db reported that the airline was cracking down on its customers bringing bottles of booze bought at duty-free to drink on board.
However, O’Leary told The Telegraph that the airline has gone a step further to stop people getting drunk on flights to Ibiza: “We used to only allow them to take bottles of water on board, not realising that they were full of vodka. Now we don’t even allow them to take those.”
“Most of our passengers show up an hour before departure. That’s sufficient for two drinks,” he claimed. “But if your flight is delayed by two or three hours, you can’t be guzzling five, six, eight, ten pints of beer. Go and have a coffee or a cup of tea. It’s not an alcoholics’ outing.”
O’Leary did say that the airports are “of course” against his proposal due to how lucrative drinks sales are for pubs and bars in the terminal. Among the critics of his proposal is Sir Tim Martin, founder of pub colossus (and staple of many an airport) Wetherspoons, who told The Telegraph “supervised consumption of alcoholic drinks in a controlled environment isn’t perfect but has considerable advantages”.
Wetherspoons invested £1.3 million into opening a new bar at its Stansted Airport pub, The Windmill, back in 2019, an indication of how profitable a spot it is for the operator.
In the interview, Martin also called out Ryanair’s own practices when it came to drinks sales: “Years ago we stopped selling ‘shooters’ at airports, as well as ‘double-up’ offers. Ryanair in contrast offers a discount on Irish whiskey if a double is ordered.”
A glance at an example of a menu for Ryanair’s ‘Getaway Cafe’ reveals a fairly extensive selection of beer, wine, spirits and even cocktails.
O’Leary did once reportedly say: “If drink sales are falling off, we get the pilots to engineer a bit of turbulence. That usually spikes sales.”
db has asked Ryanair if it has a limit on how many drinks customers can buy when onboard its aeroplanes.
O’Leary’s other ideas
During his 30 year tenure as Ryanair’s CEO, O’Leary has come up with a number of other ideas, usually in an effort to cut costs. Among the proposals he has made (but which have so fair stayed on the drawing board) are scrapping the onboard toilets, getting rid of the co-pilot, having passengers load their own luggage, and even having standing-only flights.
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