Banning cocktails won’t stop the airport drunks
IN these days of air travel austerity, where taking luggage is extra, where picking a seat will cost you and where it is only a matter of time, surely, before breathable cabin air is charged at 50p a litre, chinks of light still visible to intrepid holidaymakers are ever fewer and further between.
The brightest is hope, a trust in providence that, despite the shameless penny pinching, the metal tube will indeed descend from the sky at the allotted time and place and that, baggage handlers willing, a swift onward journey may ensue.
As I may have mentioned here before, I take an extremely dim view of those who place this most basic aspiration in jeopardy. Almost invariably they are drunks and never, ever, should they be tolerated on passenger jets purporting to serve – as opposed to punish – the public.
How delightful to learn this week, then, that Glasgow Airport is on exactly the same page vis-a-vis tanked-up yobs on planes and, henceforth, is operating a zerotolerance approach. Music to my ears, Glasgow Airport bosses. Music to my ears.
At long last relief from the boozesoaked stag and hen parties you pray at first sighting will not go anywhere near your departure gate.
Disruptive
Respite from the grim fear, as you watch them lurch down the aisle of your 737, that one or more will be so plastered and disruptive that, for our own sodding safety, the plane will have to make an unscheduled landing to boot them off.
Peace from the shouting, the belching, the arguing, the singing, the spilling and the general not giving a damn that there are other people – babies, grannies, you, me – in their midst who wish no parties inflicted on them today or any other day, thank you.
We come, then, to the detail of the Glasgow Airport ‘Campus Watch’ scheme designed to reclaim the flights for the peaceable masses. What form will this reassuring zerotolerance crackdown take, exactly?
Well, when next a stag party reveller in lurid Lycra shorts and hilarious themed T-shirt approaches the airport bar and orders 20 tequila slammers for the lads, he will be told this ‘party drink’ is no longer served around here.
‘You’re f@#% ing joking me,’ he may retort. ‘Gimme 20 flaming sambucas instead then barman.’ Once again, the bar will stand firm. That party drink is off the menu now too. Zero tolerance, see.
Now, at this point it is certainly possible that our stag boor will recognise that the game is up, that his insatiable urge to get slaughtered with his mates has been trumped by sharper minds and that, in view of the foregoing, he’ll just take 20 apple juices and be on his way. But it is about as likely as Ryanair offering free sandwiches to all fliers.
Are any other drinks banned? Yes indeed, The Sandpiper, a Wetherspoons pub in Terminal One, has withdrawn some cocktails and customers who order enormous jugs of beer will have to downsize to pint glasses instead. Will they be able to order the equivalent amount of booze providing it is served in less scarily proportioned receptacles? Yup.
What about whisky, gin, rum, vodka, schnapps, brandy... any issue with the lads getting loaded on these pre-flight? Heavens, no. Get stuck in. Just try to be compos mentis for the safety demonstration.
Are we to understand, then, that the ‘zero tolerance’ approach to the annual misery meted out by the drunken hundreds to the thousands wishing to fly in peace is a ban on a couple of party drinks? Not at all. There will be a national advertising campaign reminding people it’s not nice to be anti-social on aircraft.
And, from now on, when large groups make bookings for flights, police will be given the heads up just in case they happen to be hellraisers.
Tolerance
Well and good, but can I make a more low-tech suggestion for tightening up on the tolerance factor which, we are all agreed, now stands at absolute zero?
How about, instead of getting the drink flowing at 4am, Scottish airport bars observe similar licensing laws to those imposed on every other pub in the country? All this determination to end the menace of airport drunks rings rather hollow to me when the bars start serving in the middle of the night and do not stop until the last planeload of customers is heading skyward.
It is both fascinating and deeply disturbing that you can spend more hours per day getting wrecked in a Scottish airport than in a city pub. One you leave via a passenger jet flying at 35,000ft in a cramped cabin with all the phobias and stresses that entails. The other you leave via the pavement.
If Glasgow Airport were truly serious about resolving this issue, the 4am opening times would be history and the message it sends by retaining them is that profit, not public order, is still king.
If zero tolerance really were the watchword, Glasgow Airport spokesmen would not be fretting about putting off punters posting pictures of their first holiday pint on Facebook as one did in the Mail this week.
They would be reiterating that this is a transport hub, not a boozer. They would be saying that if beery yobs have a problem with that then, please, make everyone’s day, don’t come.