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Ryanair Wants a Two-Drink Airport Limit to Prevent Mid-Air Chaos

The low-cost carrier wants the EU to cap airport drinks at two following a string of drunken disruptions of flights

by Lauren Smith

January 16, 2025

Photo: Courtesy of Drew Beamer / Unsplash

Ryanair has called on the European Union to limit travelers to two alcoholic drinks at airports to prevent disruption from intoxicated passengers during flights.

With cheap short-haul flights, the Irish airline attracts young travelers jetting off to hard-partying vacation spots and weekend bachelor and bachelorette getaways. For some of these passengers, the party starts in the airport bar, where there are few checks on their drinking.

Photo: Ryanair, Boeing 737-800. Courtesy of Portuguese Gravity / Unsplash

Passengers boarding planes intoxicated are a nuisance to other travelers, pose a safety risk, and, in extreme cases, can force a plane to be diverted. That’s especially true if routine flight delays keep passengers in airport bars for hours.

Ryanair’s Alcohol Limit Proposal

To reduce those drunken mid-air stunts, Ryanair says passengers should be required to show their boarding passes when purchasing alcohol in airports, as they do when making purchases at duty-free stores. They should also be limited to two drinks.

“During flight delays, passengers are consuming excess alcohol at airports without any limit on purchase or consumption,” a spokesperson for Ryanair said. “We fail to understand why passengers at airports are not limited to two alcoholic drinks… as this would result in safer and better passenger behavior on board aircraft.”

Photo: Courtesy of Aero

Ryanair noted that it and other airlines already limit the sale of alcohol onboard its planes, especially to passengers who are already intoxicated.

Legal Action Against Disruptive Travelers

Ryanair called for the two-drink limit as it continues legal action against an unidentified intoxicated passenger who disrupted an April 2024 flight from Dublin (DUB) to Lanzarote (ACE) in Spain’s Canary Islands.

The carrier says the passenger’s “inexcusable behavior” forced the aircraft to divert to Porto, Portugal (OPO) for safety. More than 160 passengers and six crew members were then delayed overnight.

Photo: Courtesy of John Luke Laube / Unsplash

Ryanair is suing the unidentified passenger for €15,000 ($15,409) to recover its costs from the incident. That includes a €7,000 bill for hotels for passengers and crew members, €2,500 in landing and handling fees at the Portuguese airport, €800 in additional fuel costs, and €1,800 to bring in fresh crew members due to caps on flying hours.

The airline also wants the disruptive passenger to cover €750 from lost in-flight sales and €2,500 in Portuguese legal fees.

“None of these costs could have been incurred if this disruptive passenger had not forced a diversion to Porto,” Ryanair says.

Impact on Flight Safety

Ryanair isn’t the only airline dealing with hard-drinking and rowdy passengers. British carrier easyJet is in the headlines nearly monthly for incidents with drunken passengers.

In September, a sloshed passenger on a service from London Gatwick (LGW) to the island of Kos (KGS) in Greece scuffled with cabin crew and tried to break into the cockpit, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing in Munich (MUC).

Photo: Courtesy of easyJet

Tipsy passengers are also disrupting U.S. flights. On January 5, an intoxicated passenger in first class on an American Airlines flight from New York (JFK) to Tokyo Narita (NRT) tried to kick his way out of an airline restroom, disturbing pilots in the nearby cockpit, aggressively grabbed a flight attendant, and refused to obey cabin crew instructions. The flight was diverted to Alaska.

Increase in Disruptive Incidents

Globally, disruptive incidents on flights are on the rise. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) found one disruptive incident for every 480 flights in 2023, up from one in every 568 flights in 2022.

IATA arrived at the figures by examining more than 24,500 reports from 50 airlines but didn’t specify which disruptive incidents were caused by alcohol.

Photo: Courtesy of Kenny Eliason / Unsplash

In the U.S., what the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) calls unruly-passenger incidents peaked in 2021, as travelers rebelled against mask mandates on planes. However, incidents remain above pre-pandemic levels. The FAA recorded 2,102 disruptive passenger events last year, 80 percent more than in 2019.

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants union, partly attributed the rise to fuller planes, as airlines operate fewer flights while serving the same number of customers.

“Today, we’re seeing that every single seat is filled up. The more you have humanity packed into one location, the more likely it is that there’s conflict,” she told NPR.

Fuller planes mean boarding takes longer, overhead bins are packed, and if you miss a connection, rebooking is more difficult. That leads to longer delays and frustrated passengers, who may then lash out at airline staff or fellow travelers.

But Sheryl Skaggs, professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Dallas, emphasized the influence of alcohol and other intoxicants.

“In so many of these cases, passengers have been drinking and/or mixing them with some kind of prescription or recreational drugs,” she told NPR.