Pre-plane pints? Ryanair's Irish boss again calls for a limit on airport drinks
Michael O'Leary, the Irish boss of the Dublin-based airline Ryanair, is again calling for stricter rules around the service of alcohol in airports.
O'Leary claims that Ryanair is having to divert almost one aircraft a day because of bad behavior by passengers.
“It’s becoming a real challenge for all airlines,” the Irish airline boss told the Times in the UK this week.
As per current Irish law, airside bars in airports can serve outside of the normal licensing hours.
“I fail to understand why anybody in airports bars is serving people at five or six o’clock in the morning," O'Leary said. "Who needs to be drinking beer at that time?"
He continued: “There should be no alcohol served at airports outside [those] licensing hours.
“We have been calling for many years for a limit of two drinks per person per airport, why don’t you limit people by boarding pass?”
O'Leary further told the Times that Ryanair, unlike bars at airports, would rarely serve a passenger more than two drinks when on board.
“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," O'Leary said.
He went on to add that drugs are further complicating the matter: “In the old days, if somebody had drunk too much, they get on board, they fall asleep.
"You have a combination of drink and drugs — they want to fight somebody, they’re hyper. We and all the airlines are having enormous problems,” he said.
“And the women are as bad offenders as the men in this.”
"We don't see that as an Irish thing"
However, the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) doesn't seem to be on board with O'Leary's proposals.
"I think we’re doing a good job of keeping passengers under control," Graeme McQueen, head of media relations for the DAA, told Extra.ie.
"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."
Ryanair's civil claim
O'Leary's comments come more than a year after Ryanair filed a €15,000 civil claim against a disruptive pastsenger who forced a Dublin to Lanzarote Ryanair flight to divert to Portugal in 2024.
Announcing the details of the claim, Ryanair said in a January 2025 statement: "It is time that EU authorities take action to limit the sale of alcohol at airports.
"Airlines, like Ryanair, already restrict and limit the sale of alcohol on board our aircraft, particularly in disruptive passenger cases.
"However, during flight delays, passengers are consuming excess alcohol at airports without any limit on purchase or consumption.
"We fail to understand why passengers at airports are not limited to 2 alcoholic drinks (using their boarding pass in exactly the same way they limit duty free sales), as this would result in safer and better passenger behaviour on board aircraft, and a safer travel experience for passengers and crews all over Europe.”
The Irish Times reported this week that Ryanair received a judgment for more than €15,000 damages, as well as its legal costs, against the allegedly disruptive Dublin passenger.
#NotOnMyFlight
Previously, in 2019, Ryanair and more than a dozen organizations operating within the Irish aviation industry signed a joint declaration to tackle unruly passenger behavior as part of the #NotOnMyFlight campaign. The group committed to, in part, "recognizing that alcohol is a contributory factor to unruly behavior and seeking to minimize the occurrence of excessive alcohol consumption."
Ryanair signed on again when the #NotOnMyFlight campaign was renewed in August 2025. Citing statistics from An Garda Síochána, the Irish Aviation Authority said at the time that "intoxicated onboard aircraft" was one of the three most common incidents that year.
In the updated declaration, the signatories pledged to "recognize that alcohol and drugs may contribute to unruly behavior and seek to minimize the occurrence of excessive alcohol consumption."
