Early-morning pints not an issue, claims airport …that’s a UK problem
Dublin Airport has said Irish people don’t need to be stopped from having morning pints before their flights, after recent comments by Michael O’Leary.
The Ryanair boss has been outspoken about passengers becoming drunk and disruptive on flights, often causing journeys to be diverted. He previously called for a two‑drink limit on what airport bars will serve passengers, saying this week that the opening hours of pubs were too lax.
‘I fail to understand why anybody is serving people at five or six o’clock in the morning,’ he told the Times in the UK, adding that ‘the women are as bad as the men’ when it comes to over-indulging before a flight.
Dublin Airport has said Irish people don’t need to be stopped from having morning pints before their flights, after recent comments by Michael O’Leary. Pic: Horacio Villalobos Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images
The Dublin Airport Authority was asked to respond to Mr O’Leary’s criticism yesterday. Graeme McQueen, head of media relations for the DAA, told Extra.ie: ‘I think we’re doing a good job of keeping passengers under control. I think there is always potential for issues where you sell drinks, but we work hand-in-hand with the guards and our airport police team.’
‘The choice for customers in the morning here is over tea or coffee, Barry’s or Lyons. It’s not whether to have five, six pints. We don’t see that as an Irish thing. I think it’s probably more of an issue at the UK airports. You can see Michael makes these comments quite often in the UK, which is probably indicative of where the problem lies more so than the Irish airports.
‘Obviously, Ryanair have seen things in the air that they don’t want to see, and they’re looking for ways to answer that, but we’ll keep an eye on it here at Dublin Airport, but for the moment, we don’t see it as a major issue.’
The airport is set to welcome 11 million passengers this summer, with more than 100,000 passing through each day. The previous busiest day on record, of over 130,000 passengers last August, is almost certain to be broken, the airport’s managing director, Gary McLean, said yesterday.
He added that the airport ‘isn’t seeing any short-term impact on fuel supply’ since the US-Israeli war against Iran.
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