- Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary is calling for a two-drink alcohol limit at airports.
- He proposes using passengers’ boarding passes to monitor purchases.
- The limit would apply regardless of the time of day.
- O’Leary says drunken passengers are causing serious disruption, including flight diversions.
The airport drink may be one of those rituals travellers have traditionally regarded as harmless: a beer before a holiday, a glass of wine while waiting for a delayed flight, or perhaps something considerably stronger at an ungodly hour because, apparently, airports operate in their own time zone.
Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary would like to put some limits on that tradition. Speaking to Sky News, O’Leary renewed his call for airports to restrict passengers to two alcoholic drinks before boarding a flight. His proposed system is straightforward: passengers would show their boarding passes when purchasing alcohol, allowing airport bars to keep track of how much they have consumed.
The limit, he says, should apply at any time of day. After two drinks? O’Leary’s advice is refreshingly Irish: have a cup of tea or coffee instead.
Why is Ryanair pushing this again?
This is not a new complaint from O’Leary. The Ryanair boss has been campaigning against excessive airport drinking for years, including calls earlier this year for restrictions on alcohol sales during the early morning hours.
But his latest argument is tied to something more serious than passengers becoming loud after a few pints. O’Leary says airlines are facing a growing problem with disruptive passengers and claims Ryanair is being forced to divert around one or two aircraft every week because of passenger behaviour.
Every diversion affects far more people than the individual causing the trouble. Passengers who have nothing whatsoever to do with the incident can find themselves delayed, stranded or forced to reorganise connecting flights and onward travel.
The airport sells the drinks. The airline gets the problem.
O’Leary’s central criticism is aimed not only at passengers but at airports themselves.
He argues that airport bars can continue selling alcohol during lengthy delays, while the consequences are ultimately dealt with by the airline once passengers are in the air.
And once the aircraft has left the gate, the options become rather more limited.
Cabin crew cannot simply ask an intoxicated passenger to leave. There is nowhere to send them except back to the airport from which the aircraft has just departed — which is precisely why an unruly passenger can potentially turn into a much larger operational and safety problem.
O’Leary argues that prevention on the ground is therefore preferable to trying to manage an intoxicated passenger at 30,000 feet.
But how would a two-drink rule actually work?
This is where the proposal gets complicated.
Airports contain multiple bars, restaurants and lounges, often operated by different companies. A passenger could potentially have one drink in one establishment and another somewhere else — assuming those businesses were connected to a common tracking system.
Using boarding passes as the proposed control mechanism sounds simple enough, but it would require cooperation between airports, retailers, airlines and potentially national authorities.
There is also the obvious question of what constitutes one drink.
A pint of beer, a glass of wine and a measure of spirits do not contain the same amount of alcohol. A two-drink rule is therefore not necessarily the same thing as a two-unit rule.
And then there is the most awkward problem of all: two drinks do not automatically make somebody sober.
Some passengers can become seriously impaired after relatively little alcohol, while others may consume two drinks over several hours with little obvious effect.
That means a numerical limit could never completely replace the responsibility of airport and airline staff to refuse boarding to passengers who are visibly intoxicated or behaving dangerously.
What about Crete and the Greek islands?
For Mediterranean destinations, this debate is hardly irrelevant.
Crete, Rhodes, Corfu, Kos and other Greek holiday destinations receive enormous numbers of visitors travelling through European airports during the summer season. Many arrive looking for sun, sea, nightlife and a week away from ordinary life.
Most behave perfectly well.
But the minority who combine heavy drinking with poor judgement can create disproportionate problems for everyone else, passengers, cabin crew, airport staff, police and eventually the destination itself.
Nobody wants their holiday disrupted because another passenger decided that the airport bar was an all-inclusive resort.
There is also a wider tourism question here. Holiday destinations cannot control what someone drinks before boarding a flight, but they ultimately inherit the consequences when disruptive behaviour continues after arrival.
The bigger question: should drunk passengers be allowed to board?
This may actually be the more important question behind O’Leary’s proposal.
Airlines already have procedures for dealing with passengers who are considered unfit to fly. The difficulty is identifying the problem before boarding rather than after the aircraft is already in the air.
Someone who is visibly staggering through the terminal is relatively easy to identify.
Someone who has been drinking for several hours but is still perfectly capable of standing upright is considerably more difficult.
That makes airport alcohol policy only one part of a much larger issue involving passenger behaviour, staff training, airport security and enforcement.
O’Leary’s proposal may therefore be imperfect, but it has reopened a legitimate aviation-safety discussion.
Argophilia Reality Check
Nobody needs to be told that airports are strange places.
People arrive at 5 a.m. for a flight, discover that the airport bar is open, and suddenly the biological laws governing time cease to matter.
But there is a sensible distinction between having a drink before a holiday and becoming so intoxicated that an entire aircraft — and potentially another aircraft following it in the schedule — has to pay the price.
A two-drink limit would be difficult to implement and would undoubtedly produce arguments about enforcement, fairness and personal freedom.
Still, there is one principle that should not be particularly controversial:
Your holiday should not begin by ruining everybody else’s.
Argophilia has reported on the proposal following Michael O’Leary’s interview with Sky News. The interview was the original broadcast source for his latest two-drink proposal.