News & Advice

U.K. Airports May Ban Alcohol—And Passengers Might Be Cool With It

Britain's new aviation minister wants to crack down on alcohol-fueled bad behavior. But he's not the only one.
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When most of us think of airport annoyances, we call out painfully long security lines or hours-long delays on the tarmac. But Tariq Ahmad, Britain's new aviation minister, thinks there's another grievous issue to consider: travelers getting drunk and disorderly at airports. His suggestion? A major crackdown on alcohol sales in all of the U.K.'s airports. To which you might say: hahahahaha. This is no joke to Ahmad, though. "It’s important that passengers who board planes are also responsible and have a responsibility to other passengers, and that certainly should be the factor which we bear in mind," the aviation minister said in a statement. "If you are a young family traveling on a plane you want to go from point A to B, you don’t want to be disrupted."

But it isn't just young families who have expressed frustration about unruly airline passengers. The team behind the annual World Travel Market (WTM) trade show in London polled 1,000 regular travelers about their experiences in the air, and nearly all reported that they had had to deal with at least one disruptive passenger on a flight. Perhaps even more surprising? A whopping 73 percent said that they were in favor of an alcohol ban for early morning flights. "Our research shows that many people are concerned about air rage and want stricter controls on pre-flight and in-flight alcohol sales," said Simon Press, the WTM's senior director, told The Telegraph. "Most of us wouldn’t consider downing a pint of lager at 6:30 a.m during our normal daily routine, yet at airports and on board aircraft, alcohol is so readily available and as a consequence many of us have experienced an intoxicated passenger on a flight."

So now that it's clear many passengers are fine with the government stepping in to regulate alcohol in airports, what happens next? Ahmad and team will start by leading an investigation into how bars, restaurants, and duty-free stores sell alcohol. The program comes after repeated stories of Brits behaving badly in the skies. British Airways banned passenger Bridget Nhire for life after she reportedly harassed passengers and crew (at least she didn't discriminate) on a flight from London to Dubai; meanwhile, a visibly drunk woman was escorted off a Ryanair flight from Ibiza to Newcastle after screaming and swearing at flight attendants. And when a crew member refused to serve more alcohol to a stag party en route from London to Bratislava, the ensuing rumble prompted the plane to make an emergency landing so several of the men could be arrested.

The recent wave of bad PR for Britain is apparently behind Ahmad's crackdown. Still, don't expect a full-on ban (or closure of the new Gatwick Airport gin distillery) just yet. Glasgow and Manchester's airports have experimented by selling alcohol in sealed bags, hoping it deters people from ripping in before they board. Several groups, including the U.K. airport police union and the national Airport Operators Association (AOA), just released the first-ever U.K. Aviation Industry Code of Practice on Disruptive Passengers, a set of guidelines for preventing and dealing with difficult passengers.

The document notes that internal airline data "suggests that excessive and uncontrolled alcohol consumption is a common factor [of disruptive behavior], but it is not the only factor." Among the measures approved by signatories to the document (which include all U.K. airports, plus airlines like Thomas Cook, Virgin Atlantic, and easyJet) are requiring all reports of disruptive passengers to be investigated by the police, forcing passengers who behave badly to pay any fees their actions incur (such as repairing damaged property or covering delayed flight fines), and making bars and restaurants report drunk and disorderly patrons to airport officials. One of the signatories, Jet2.com, a discount carrier based out of Leeds, has announced that it will not serve any alcohol on its planes before 8:00 a.m. local time. It's a sobering thought, no?

This post was originally published in August. It has been updated with new information.