Ryanair CEO Wants To Ban 5AM Airport Beer Ritual: Fair, Self-Serving, Or Both?

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary is one of the most outspoken people in the airline industry. He’s also known for almost exclusively promoting positions that help his airline, which is fair enough. So along those lines, here’s the latest example of that…

Ryanair wants to ban alcoholic drinks before morning flights

Ryanair’s CEO is calling on airports to be banned from serving alcohol to passengers before early morning flights, arguing that this would reduce the number of disruptions onboard aircraft. O’Leary claims that Ryanair is having to divert an average of one flight per day due to poor passenger behavior, and alcohol is one of the main contributors to poor behavior onboard aircraft.

O’Leary points out how the UK has licensing hour restrictions that govern the sale of alcohol, but that doesn’t apply to bars at airport. As O’Leary explained:

“It’s becoming a real challenge for all airlines. I fail to understand why anybody in airport bars is serving people at five or six o’clock in the morning. Who needs to be drinking beer at that time? There should be no alcohol served at airports outside licensing hours.”

Of course it’s pointed out that Ryanair sells alcohol onboard flights, and flight attendants are known to be very motivated to sell, given that they have quotas to reach (or at least they historically have). O’Leary defended that by pointing out that the airline rarely sells more than two drinks to a passenger:

“We are reasonably responsible, but the ones who are not responsible, the ones who are profiteering off it, are the airports who have these bars open at five or six o’clock in the morning and during delays are quite happy to send these people as much alcohol as they want because they know they’re going to export the problem to the airlines.”

Lol, you’ve gotta love O’Leary saying Ryanair is “reasonably responsible,” and suggests the airline isn’t really “profiteering off” alcohol, while airport vendors are. O’Leary has also called on a general limit of two alcoholic drinks per person at airports, regardless of the time of day, to minimize issues onboard flights.

Of course being intoxicated on a plane violates regulations in most countries, and can lead to a penalty. Ryanair in particular has been known to go after passengers who cause diversions, suing them for the costs incurred. It seems this is almost done more for optics than anything, in terms of showing people that poor behavior has consequences (it’s something I commend the airline for).

O’Leary has a (convenient) point about alcohol

The culture around drinking at airports is kind of funny:

• An airport is one of the few places you can have a drink in the early hours of the morning without getting judged too hard
• In terms of economic incentives, airports are essentially shopping malls and food halls that just happen to have gates, and most airports get a cut on sales, so there’s an incentive to sell people whatever they’d like to buy
• Airlines (and particularly Ryanair) will also gladly sell passengers alcohol onboard, because it’s another revenue opportunity

If I were to look at this objectively and say “okay, what’s best for society,” sure, maybe banning alcohol at the airports early in the morning would be a “best practice,” in terms of minimizing disruptions to flights. But at the same time, I just think this is a strange place to draw a line:

• Some people flying at 6AM are just going on holiday and have one drink before their flight in a celebratory way, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that
• I don’t necessarily assume someone having a drink or two at an airport in the morning poses more of a risk than someone having a drink or two in the evening
• It’s a really slippery slope to claim “oh, we want to avoid diversions as much as possible,” while also carving out very narrow situations where alcohol shouldn’t be allowed, in a way that closely aligns with economic incentives
• Airport lounges would presumably continue to have alcohol with virtually no limits, so any rule would be rather inconsistent
• In general I don’t disagree with the concept of a limit of two drinks per person at an airport (or whatever), but tracking that is virtually impossible, and isn’t something that’s likely to get very far, given the differing incentives of various parties

Bottom line

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary is calling on morning alcohol sales at airports to be banned. He argues that traditional bars only have certain hours over which they can serve alcohol, but that doesn’t apply to airports. O’Leary claims that the airline is now seeing an average of one diversion per day due to unruly passengers, and alcohol is a major contributor to that.

There’s no denying that alcohol does contribute to some inflight issues, and that normalizing drinking early in the morning is something that’s generally only not frowned down upon at airports. I’m just curious to what extent O’Leary’s take here is motivated by his desire to sell more alcohol onboard, rather than an actual concern over diversions.

What do you make of O’Leary proposing a morning airport alcohol ban?