As seat pitch shrinks and amenities are slashed, many passengers have taken to the bottle. But drunk passengers in the UK may soon get six-digit bill for drinking one too many.
Drunk and disorderly conduct by airline passengers is a growing problem in the UK. This has prompted the government to embark upon a “One Too Many” campaign at airports across the Kingdom.
source: www.nordan.org
In addition to new digital display boards warning against drunkenness, Conde Nast reports:
Police officers and airport employees have been ordered to be extra vigilant about stopping drunk passengers before they board and warning them that in addition to the regular £5,000 ($6,500) fine and two years of jail time, they could also have to pay a much steeper penalty—an amount that translates to the costs put on airlines for having to divert flights.
That fine is as high as £80,000 ($105,000). If such a fine seems cruel and unusual, it is neither. That’s how much a diversion can cost, especially when it causes passengers to miss onward connections or crews to time out.
Banned. For Life.
The campaign will also warn passengers that airlines have the right to ban disruptive passengers for life. You might recall this happened last month after an incident of drunken-fueled rage aboard a Jet2 flight to Ibiza.
> Read More: THIS Is How You Deal With An Unruly Passenger
CONCLUSION
With the summer holidays in full swing, be very careful about ordering that extra beer or cocktail before your flight. Penalties for poor behavior really question the value proposition of loosening up before a flight or once onboard.
This is sort of a halfway move in the right direction. This should be subsumed into a law that causes these same penalties for extremely poor behavior regardless of whether alcohol was involved. Additionally, since it’s pretty transparent that airlines collude (on capacity discipline as just one example), maybe the airlines could actually collude in a fashion that would benefit themselves and the customer by enforcing lifetime no-fly bans for anyone causing a diversion for a non medical reason.
Of course the airlines, particularly the Ryanairs of this world applaude this sort of warning and ban while their crews are pressured to sell, sell, sell on board including alcohol. Presumably by stopping people drinking alcohol in the terminal they are hoping more will buy on board increasing their profits all the more.
If the airlines are so serious, let them stop selling alcohol where there is a buy on board service, they all already limit consumption severly in economy and of course premium passengers are always perfectly behaved – according to Penny in Come Fly with Me.