Ryanair is the largest airline in Europe. The low fare, big fees carrier flew over 180 million passengers last year.
Its CEO Michael O’Leary has claimed that he would charge passengers to use the lavatory, cram more people into planes by making them stand, and pay people to fly since he’d make it back on fees. He says that since flight attendants are “sexually athletic” his airline won’t stand in the way of workplace romance. And he wants to replace airport security with profiling Muslim males.
Now he has a new hobby horse: demanding airports limit passengers to two alcoholic drinks.
[Ryanair CEO Michael] O’Leary believes that airports need to limit “the amount of alcohol that can be sold to any passenger to two alcoholic drinks” to help reduce instances of airline passengers becoming disruptive on flights…
“In the same way that you have to show your boarding pass when you go through Duty Free to buy cigarettes or alcohol, we believe you should show your boarding pass to buy an alcoholic drink at a bar at an airport, and you shouldn’t be served more than two alcoholic drinks, particularly when flights are delayed,” he said.
Copyright: trevorbenbrook / 123RF Stock Photo
He says that flight delays mean people spend more time drinking before boarding. But Ryanair sells alcohol on board, and he isn’t suggesting that they scale this back. It is very simple to model this.
- Ryanair sells alcoholic beverages.
- Airports are competition.
- Limiting airport sales will boost onboard sales.
- Ryanair, more than most carriers, relies on ancillary rather rather than just ticket price.
It turns out that drinking at the airport is better than drinking on board, since inflight alcohol can increase risk of a heart attack.
During the pandemic onboard incidents spiked to much higher levels than we’re seeing today. In the U.S. incidents are down 80%. That’s because the driver of these incidents was bringing passengers more likely to engage in them together inside a metal tube, imposing controversial mask requirements, and refusing to sell them alcohol on board so people pre-gamed in the airport and brought their own on.
He says lots of things, but one thing he’d never say is that RyanAir would contribute one penny to pay for it.
The service is so poor and the delays so long on Ryan Air you would need to be drunk to get on one of their flights. O’Leary also referenced powders and pills as a problem. Perhaps he needs to breathalyse and drug test all his passengers before boarding. No reason why all other flyers should suffer because he runs his airline so badly.
Gary – I realize you are trying to sensationalize this and attribute goals that were not expressed with respect to increasing inflight alcohol sales but it actually isn’t a bad idea. First of all I enjoy a cocktail or craft beer as much as anyone but many inflight incidents are caused by a passenger that was over served (almost always before getting on the plane). You yourself posted that one of the reasons there have been fewer inflight incidents since COVID is that passengers can order alcohol on the flight so they don’t pound them in the airport (or before).
Limiting a person to 2 drinks at an airport, while it likely would never fly (at least in the US) due to airport restaurants and bars being against it, is a solid idea and likely would reduce the number of inflight incidents. I agree many of his ideas are a little crazy and Ryanair leads the way in ULLC add on fees but this isn’t a bad idea.
I would be fine with airlines banning the serving of alcoholic beverages.
So instead of preventing highly drunk and problematic from boarding you’d encourage the behavior onboard so that crew and other passengers would suffer. I really can’t understand why people would ever support this business. But it’s pretty clear people will allow themselves to be treated like garbage to save a few euros/dollars.
Limit the booze whilst on the ground, then give a discount on double whiskeys whilst onboard.
Okaaaayyy…
I could only imagine the look on all the faces of the English and Scottish when you cut them off at 2 drinks