Ryanair boss calls for two-drink limit at airports as inflight violence rises

By Clive McKeef

Crew and passengers dealing with onboard disruptions weekly

We don't allow people to drink-drive, yet we keep putting them up in aircraft at 33,000 feet. Ryanair CEO, Michael O'Leary

The CEO of Europe's largest budget airline, Ryanair, has called for an alcohol limit at airport bars amid claims drunken and drugged passengers are disrupting flights regularly.

Airplane passengers should be restricted to two drinks at airports, Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary told the Daily Telegraph.

Introducing alcohol limits at airports would help tackle a rise in disorder on flights, said O'Leary, who started the budget carrier in 1984.

Ryanair (RYAAY) (IE:RYA) has seen a "notable rise" in bad behavior caused by drunken behavior especially when it is mixed with other substances, he said.

Crew members and other passengers on the budget airline have become targets and the budget airline has to deal with assault cases on a weekly basis, O'Leary told Sky News. Passengers fighting each other was also described as a growing trend, he said.

"We don't want to begrudge people having a drink," he told the Daily Telegraph. "But we don't allow people to drink-drive, yet we keep putting them up in aircraft at 33,000 feet."

His remarks come after a British holidaymaker was convicted of sexually assaulting a flight attendant on a Ryanair service from Newcastle to Majorca in 2023.

Flight delays add to the problem, with longer drinking times at airports, he said.

"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," which brings on more aggressive behavior, O'Leary said.

"It's the mix. You get much more aggressive behavior that becomes very difficult to manage."

"We used to only allow them to take bottles of water on board, not realizing they were full of vodka. Now we don't even allow those."

The problem is experienced across airlines and is Europe-wide, but travel from beach destinations like Ibiza and Greek islands to regional airports including Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester and Edinburgh flights is "notably bad."

It's on those flights that measures such as bag searches take place to ensure no alcohol is brought on board a flight, though O'Leary said there are also problems on flights to and from Ireland and Germany.

"Ibiza is by far and away the worst destination for it," O'Leary added.

However, airports are opposed to changes, O'Leary argued, insisting that they refuse to serve passengers who are too drunk, according to the Daily Mail.

The culprits are often the people "you least expect" and fit no particular profile, the carrier's director of inflight operations, Sinead Quinn told Sky News.

O'Leary also predicted airfares would drop a further 5% as the winter approaches, after rising by about 20% in the past couple of years, but it won't be until summer 2025 that prices will reach 2023 levels, he told Sky News.

The global IT outage in July, caused by a CrowdStrike (CRWD) played havoc with global air travel and caused days of flight delays and cancellations and could happen again, he added.

"I think we can never say there won't be another one," he said. "We live in a digital age and I live in fear all the time about my reservation system crashing or digital payments going wrong... everybody's business, everybody's experience on a daily basis is at the mercy of these major IT providers".

-Clive McKeef

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08-28-24 0618ET

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