Ryanair has started searching passengers on flights to and from Ibiza to combat rising disruptive behaviour, searching passengers’ bags and removing all liquid bottles.
CEO Michael O’Leary suggested patrons have been filling water bottles with alcohol At a press conference in Dublin he repeated his suggestion of limiting passengers to two alcoholic drinks served at airports and suggested marking boarding passes to enforce this limit. He also criticised the early opening hours of airport bars.
O’Leary highlighted the concerning trend of increased disruptive incidents, including cases of crew assault and passengers attempting to open exit doors mid-flight, stressing the need for stricter management of unruly behaviour.
He said “I don’t understand why the bars at airports are open at 7 in the morning. We have licensing laws – normal pubs don’t open until 11 or 12 o’clock. Why are the pubs open as early as 5am for people to drink Guinness.
“Would it cost us money? Not much. Our average flight time is one hour 15 minutes; few people would drink more than two in that time.”
“We have cases of our crews being assaulted. There was one nutjob coming in to Stansted last weekend and he tried to open the over-wing exit; he was, full of drink. Our crew should not have to deal with that kind of misbehaviour on board, and they do have to deal with it in an increasing number of cases. It does have to be tackled.”
The Gardai have been terrific in helping deal with disruptive passengers, but a lot of times we land in Spain and the drunk is arrested by the local constabulary and released the following day. He sobers up and releases him. It’s a real challenge for all airlines.”
“Would it cost us money? Not much. Our average flight time is one hour 15 minutes; few people would drink more than two in that time.”
