“Time doesn’t exist when you’re at an airport” is something many of us have muttered to ourselves while sipping a 7 am cocktail at an airport bar. And whether you’re looking at that cocktail to offer up some liquid courage before boarding your flight or are simply just interested in getting a head start on your vacation, you may soon be cut off after two drinks.
That’s if Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary gets his way, anyway.
O’Leary has suggested that airports implement a two-drink limit for passengers ordering alcoholic beverages in order to reduce disruptive behavior on flights. O’Leary exclusively told The Independent UK:
We and most of the airlines around Europe are seeing a spike upwards, particularly this summer, of disgruntled passengers on board. I think the real challenge is: flight delays are up at a record high this summer, so people are spending time in airports drinking before they board aircraft.
“Passengers fighting with each other is a growing trend on board aircraft,” added O’Leary at a news conference in London. He also claims that assaults by drunk passengers are occurring on an almost weekly basis now, compared to barely happening at all five to ten years ago.
And this isn’t a figment of O’Leary’s imagination–the International Air Transport Association, who runs a campaign titled “One Too Many” which urges passengers to behave responsibly, reports an “increase in the rate of reported unruly passenger incidents.”
Numbers from May 2024 show that there was one unruly incident reported for every 480 flights in 2023, up from one per 568 flights in 2022 and one per 835 flights in 2021.
To combat this, O’Leary suggests requiring passengers to show their boarding pass when ordering drinks at airport bars, similar to when purchasing cigarettes or alcohol in duty free shops, and be limited to only two drinks. He has already called for governments across Europe to implement more effective fines for disruptive passengers.
Whether the drink limit will actually come into fruition or not is unknown, but who knows–you may soon have to put the cocktail sipping on hold until you reach your destination! And this isn’t the only change (potentially) heading to airports–TSA also plans to lift the 3.4-ounce liquid limit. More on this here.