Drunk air passenger arrests soar 50%

ARRESTS for drunken behaviour at airports and on aeroplanes have rocketed by half over the past year, a report shows.

It said 387 passengers were arrested last year for causing alcohol-fuelled disruption at airports or on aircraft – a rise of 50 per cent on 2015.

BBC1’s Panorama collected the information from 18 of the 20 police forces that cover Britain’s airports.

Licensing laws which affect pubs, bars and shops do not apply to ‘airside’ areas of airports, the zones in which passengers wait for flights after passing through security.

A House of Lords committee reported this spring that one airline – Jet2 – was faced with 536 disruptive incidents in the summer of 2016. It said that many offenders ‘had the opportunity to drink heavily at the airport before they get on the flight’.

Panorama said more than half the cabin crew staff who answered a survey said they had either experienced or witnessed verbal, physical or sexual abuse on a UK flight. One in five had been physically abused.

Former Virgin airlines crew manager Ally Murphy said: ‘People just see us as barmaids in the sky. They would touch your breasts, or they’d touch your bum or your legs ... I’ve had hands going up my skirt before.’

Baroness Hayter, of Alcohol Concern, said of airports: ‘They are selling alcohol in front of children, they are selling it around licensing hours, they are selling it without asking how much people have already drunk. They are making it very, very readily available.’

Karen Dee, of the Airport Operators Association, said: ‘I don’t accept that the airports don’t sell alcohol responsibly.

‘The sale of alcohol per se is not a problem. It is the misuse of it and drinking to excess and then behaving badly.’

The Lords committee said rules that applied elsewhere should also be implemented airside.

The Home Office said ministers were considering the peers’ report. Panorama’s Plane Drunk airs today at 8.30pm.