Wetherspoon said clamping down on airport drinking would be a “Big Brother” approach after Ryanair’s CEO called for stricter alcohol rules to avoid unruly behaviour on flights.
Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary has called for airports to ban passengers from buying early-morning pints and impose a two-drink limit to try to limit bad behaviour once on board the plane.
Meanwhile, Wetherspoon boss Tim Martin said in a statement that “a two-drink limit would be extraordinarily difficult to implement, short of breathalysing passengers, and would, in our opinion, be an overreaction – especially since many of the problems stem from incoming flights.”
Mr O’Leary told The Times his airline was having to divert almost one plane a day on average because of disruption caused by passengers partly fuelled by alcohol. He made similar comments to The Independent’s travel podcast in 2024.
Mr Martin, whose pub chain has locations at Stansted, Heathrow and Gatwick airports among others, has previously clashed with Mr O’Leary over mixing flying with drinking.
The Licensing Act 2003 currently allows airside pubs, restaurants and shops to sell alcohol without a premises licence, something that other normal venues across the country have to obtain.
Mr O’Leary said the rules should apply to airport venues too.
“There should be no alcohol served at airports outside [those] licensing hours,” he said. “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?”
He added that Ryanair would rarely serve more than two alcoholic drinks to passengers during a flight, but said that “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”.
Following O’Leary’s comments, JD Wetherspoon, whose pubs are found in many airport terminals across the UK, said it had analysed its airport pubs’ takings in the past six months and found that two-thirds of sales were from food, soft drinks, tea and coffee.
The popular pub chain said a “significant proportion” of the alcoholic drinks ordered came with a meal at airports.
It also argued that imposing limits would mean passengers could potentially start buying alcohol from off-licences or supermarkets before arriving at the airport.
Wetherspoon added that its airport pubs are “highly supervised” environments and that strict policies were in place to prevent excessive alcohol consumption.
“The company believes that the problem is worse on some incoming flights from certain destinations, where the airport controls are perhaps less – a view shared by Mr O’Leary,” it said.
Wetherspoon said it has “never been suggested” that its customers have caused issues on flights.
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