{"id":434899,"date":"2026-05-06T09:44:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T09:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/434899\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T09:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T09:44:07","slug":"ryanairs-michael-oleary-calls-for-ban-on-early-morning-preflight-airport-drinking-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/434899\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryanair\u2019s Michael O\u2019Leary calls for ban on early morning preflight airport drinking \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Airports should be banned from serving alcohol to passengers before early-morning flights, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/ryanair\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/ryanair\">Ryanair <\/a>boss <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/michael-oleary\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/michael-oleary\/\">Michael O\u2019Leary<\/a> has said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He said the measure would reduce the number of passengers who were disruptive on-board aircraft.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">O\u2019Leary said Ryanair was being forced to divert an average of nearly one flight every day because of bad behaviour on-board, up from one a week a decade ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In an interview with the London Times, O\u2019Leary said: \u201cIt\u2019s becoming a real challenge for all airlines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cI fail to understand why anybody in airport bars is serving people at five or six o\u2019clock in the morning.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cWho needs to be drinking beer at that time?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Airside bars in the UK and Ireland are not required to follow restrictions on opening hours that apply to other venues selling alcohol.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">O\u2019Leary said: \u201cThere should be no alcohol served at airports outside [those] licensing hours.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He said Ryanair rarely served more than two drinks to a passenger, and called for a two-drink limit to be introduced at airports.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cWe 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\u2019clock in the morning and during delays are quite happy to send these people as much alcohol as they want because they know they\u2019re going to export the problem to the airlines.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Being drunk on a plane is a criminal offence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In January last year, Ryanair announced it had started taking legal action to recover losses against disruptive passengers when they forced a flight to be diverted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It said it filed legal proceedings against a passenger in Ireland to seek \u20ac15,000 in damages related to a flight from Dublin to Lanzarote. \u2013 PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Airports should be banned from serving alcohol to passengers before early-morning flights, Ryanair boss Michael O\u2019Leary has said.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,10726,1899],"class_list":["post-434899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-michael-oleary","tag-ryanair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}