Overview
- JD Wetherspoon chair Tim Martin on Thursday called the proposed morning ban and two-drink cap a Big Brother approach that would be hard to enforce without breath tests.
- Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary this week urged airports to stop serving alcohol before early flights and to cap sales at two drinks per passenger using boarding-pass checks.
- He said Ryanair now diverts nearly one flight a day because of unruly, often intoxicated passengers, up from about one diversion a week a decade ago.
- UK airside bars are exempt from standard pub licensing hours under the Licensing Act, while being drunk on an aircraft is a criminal offense that can bring fines up to £5,000 and two years in prison.
- Other airlines such as Jet2 want a national register of disruptive passengers, and Ryanair has pursued civil recovery of diversion costs, including a €15,000 claim in Ireland.