Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary wants airports to crack down on alcohol sales before flights, portraying himself as a crusader against drunk and disorderly passengers. Forgive me if I’m skeptical.
Ryanair CEO Calls For Airport Alcohol Crackdown Before Flights
Michael O’Leary is once again calling for stricter limits on alcohol sales at airports, including bans on early morning drinking and a two-drink maximum before flights. The Ryanair CEO says unruly passenger behavior is getting worse and blames airport bars for overserving travelers before they board aircraft.
“I fail to understand why anybody in airports bars is serving people at five or six o’clock in the morning. Who needs to be drinking beer at that time?”
On the surface, he has a point. Drunk passengers are a genuine problem. Nobody wants to sit next to a sloshed “holidaymaker” screaming through a four-hour flight to Tenerife. Diversions are expensive, disruptive, and occasionally dangerous.
But let’s not pretend this is some noble public safety crusade.
This Is Also About Money
Ryanair is not exactly known as an airline that discourages alcohol consumption onboard.
Quite the opposite.
The airline aggressively pushes onboard ancillary sales, including alcohol, scratch-off tickets, snacks, and virtually anything else passengers might buy impulsively at 35,000 feet. Ancillary revenue is central to Ryanair’s business model.
That is why O’Leary’s sudden concern over airport pints feels a bit rich.
What Ryanair really dislikes is passengers getting drunk somewhere else before boarding.
That’s because:
- Ryanair does not make money from airport bar sales
- Passengers who drink heavily before boarding are less likely to purchase drinks onboard
- Cabin crews can regulate onboard consumption and cut passengers off
- Airport bars externalize the operational consequences onto airlines
That last point is fair….he’s like a politician who sprinkles in a bit of truth around his distortions. But the financial incentives here are obvious too.
O’Leary Is Not Wrong About Airport Drinking Culture
Again, O’Leary is not totally off-base. Airports operate in a bizarre twilight zone where social norms suddenly disappear. People who would never order a beer at 5:30 AM on a Tuesday somehow think nothing of drinking three pints before a flight to Ibiza (I’ve seen it myself at London Gatwick…).
And airport bars absolutely encourage that behavior.
O’Leary says Ryanair now diverts roughly one flight per day because of disruptive passengers, compared to about one per week a decade ago.
That is a startling increase if accurate.
His proposed solution is:
- No alcohol sales before standard licensing hours
- A two-drink limit for passengers in airport bars
- Closer monitoring of intoxicated travelers before boarding
Good luck enforcing that consistently across Europe….
The issue is that airports, bars, and airlines all have incentives to pass responsibility to somebody else and all profit from alcohol sales. Yes, there is probably room for tighter oversight. But coming from Ryanair, it is hard not to view this at least partly as an attempt to shift alcohol spending from airport pubs to the beverage cart onboard.
CONCLUSION
Michael O’Leary wants airports to crack down on pre-flight drinking and there is certainly some merit to the argument.
Disruptive passengers remain a problem long after the pandemic and airport drinking culture strikes me as ridiculous. But let’s also be honest about the economics here.
Ryanair has no problem selling alcohol when Ryanair gets the revenue and controls the consumption. What O’Leary really seems to dislike is passengers getting drunk somewhere else first!
His comment isn’t wrong. People probably do drink too much at the airport. And you are also probably right that there is secondary monetary benefit to him. I read it as “let’s make the airport experience as miserable as possible so our terrible flights and seats don’t seem so bad afterward”. Might as well limit food and wifi at the airport too while we are at it. People eat too much and spend too much time on their phones too.
One diversion a day? IDK, that sounds made up. But regarding cheap beers, those don’t exist because the Wetherspoon’s at Gatwick definitely does not charge typical Wetherspoon’s prices. If you have 3-4 pints there, you’ve spent more on beer than you spent on your flight to Ibiza.
I would love to see a sample of breathalyzer readings. 1. Unpon boarding 2. Upon deplaning 3. And a control group like weekend shoppers. Objectively to understand when and what compels some to pound alcohol when traveling.
If the frequency of alcohol fueled diversions has risen so drastically it should be addressed
The guy is a cunt and should be institutionalised and lobotomised. The only thing we agree on is that this ecofriendliness green EU stuff is complete and utter BS! I think all ULCCs should fail and legacy carriers should really make a comeback.
So that … HE/Ryanair can sell it to them instead!
Or, he really doesn’t imagine his policies will be implemented, but he loves getting free publicity. Float pay toilets or standing “seats” or get into a public disagreement with Musk, the all get you free publicity. I’ll be on my first Ryanair flight this summer. I maxed out all ancilaries and it still was dirt cheap.
On a certain level I think it’s great that the best known Irish airline (sorry Aer Lingus) is run by an angry, sweary shouty cheap Irish bastard. Just add drink and he’s a four quadrant Irish stereotype!
O’Liary calls for airports to stop selling alcohol from time to time but on this matter, the g*b sh*te (Irish term for the likes of O’Liary) always fails to lead from the front and stop selling alcohol on board his flights. When he stops selling on board alcohol at grossly inflated prices then perhaps he can credibly make the case for airports to reduce sales. Until then he should be treated with the contempt he invariably deserves.
Wait? There are airports with cheap beer??
This needs to be its own story.
SDU, DAD, DPS (domestic), SKB come to mind.
Why Matthew! How dare you suggest that Leary is anything other than a gentle, altruistic, generous, abstemious, puritanical sort with a strict sense of honesty and propriety.
Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Unruly passengers are part of the business model for a discount airline. Manage it by training your crew. I would never get completely sloshed on a plane, but I do enjoy the culture of having a cold beer and pretzel for breakfast when transiting through Frankfurt at 6 am. It’s not supposed to make sense, that’s exactly what makes it fun and a departure from everyday life.
Wherever you are, you should always consume alcohol responsibly!
By the way, the two female flight attendants in the article’s photo are very cool and impressive!
Note that Sir Tim Martin, chairman of pub chain JD Wetherspoon, has criticized Michael O’Leary’s proposal as a “big brother approach” that would be “extraordinarily difficult to implement”.
If he’s genuinely concerned about alcohol consumption, then introduce random breath testing at the gate.