We’re all sick of flying with drunken louts ...so let’s ban airport booze

Jonathan Brocklebank

AT least once on every medium-haul flight it is healthy to review our circumstances and quietly experience the existential panic. Here we are in a metal tube seven miles above Earth.

Our cruising speed is 500mph. We don’t know how the controls work and there is no facility for getting off early.

I try to fit in brief moments of quiet reflection on take-off and landing too. It is insane how quickly after leaving the ground we are so high above it that returning there by accident would be catastrophic. Coming down, that split second when we are back within jumping distance of terra firma is delicious.

There was a time when contemplating our mortality was the most sobering task for the occasional flyer, when all else was dreamy stewardesses, cute mini-pillows, in-flight nosh, duty free smells and boiled sweets to suck on the descent.

I remember when passengers were vaguely curious to see who would be sitting next to them. Once, in that golden age of air travel, I found myself next to the TV celebrity Anneka Rice who, it turned out, was on her way to film an episode of Treasure Hunt.

We slipped effortlessly into conversation... Me: ‘Would you like my dessert?’ Miss Rice: ‘No thanks.’ …and slipped out again. Yes, that was how it was in the old days. Classy, civilised. Even household names could fly economy class, find themselves sitting next to a 19-year-old and still be in with a reasonable chance that he would pretend not to recognise her.

Curiosity no longer captures my attitude towards fellow passengers sitting nearby. Dread sums it up better.

And those moments of scaring myself with thoughts of disaster are becoming a blessed diversion from the bedlam unfolding on-board.

The reason for the mayhem at 35,000ft is the usual reason for mayhem anywhere in this country: drink.

Rivers of it flow at every major Scottish airport at this time of year. It is consumed in such vast quantities, in fact, that Prestwick Airport has taken on bouncers to patrol the bars.

This in an airport – a place where police with semi-automatic weapons are more than enough to subdue the party animal in me.

But wander past the airside watering holes at Glasgow Airport in particular (open from 4am until the last flight) and you’ll find parties in full swing at almost any time of day.

Of course they are. Stag and hen parties’ flights to whichever land they have chosen to grace with their insobriety can leave at any time.

It would never do to arrive there compos mentis. So get it down you – and get it right up those who have a problem with it. Sourpusses. This mentality is odious enough in airports where travellers not engaged in stag or hen festivities are at least afforded the opportunity to put distance between themselves and the shouty people. There is no such option seven miles up in a metal tube.

It is, then, with a song in their hearts, booze in their bellies and every intention of downing lots more that these merry travellers climb aboard the aircraft and fumble their way into seats.

Hilarious

As they become accustomed to their surroundings, they notice flight attendants doing their job. In a flash of alcohol induced inspiration, they decide it would be hilarious to make that job harder.

Would that, even for a moment, they put their victims’ responsibilities to their passengers before their own crass amusement. Would that they even took account of the fact there were other people on the plane. But the flipside of this blind determination to party is blind disregard, blind selfishness. All this was much in evidence on a Ryanair flight from Prestwick as it descended into Ibiza. Spreading their arms out like wings, what looked like half the plane belted out the Dambusters theme tune before breaking in to chants of ‘here we, here we, here we f ***** g go’.

That aircraft at least landed at the intended destination – an island now almost completely given over to debauchery and unlistenable music anyway.

But last month an easyJet aircraft en route to Majorca from Glasgow had to put down in Toulouse to offload 24 drunk people the captain no longer wished to tolerate.

In September, a Jet2 flight from Glasgow to Tenerife made an unscheduled landing in Portugal to send 14 passengers on their way with lifetime bans.

In April, the same airline had the good sense to eject a sozzled stag group of 25 from a Glasgow-bound flight before it left the airport in Prague.

This month Jet2 went one better, refusing to let two ‘drunk and disruptive’ passengers at Glasgow Airport even board a plane for Alicante. ‘The plane is not a nightclub,’ says the airline’s managing director Phil Ward. ‘You can’t step outside to get some fresh air.’

He makes an excellent point. I am uncomfortable in the company of very drunk people at the best of times. I don’t appreciate repeated beery invitations to confirm whether I am all right.

Aggression

I’ve seen jovial inebriation morph into uncontained aggression too many times. Why must air passengers who can control their behaviour be imprisoned next to these boozy loose cannons?

Perhaps, then, the time has come to ban all alcohol sales from all airports and all aircraft. Certainly the traditional way forward in dealing with irresponsible drinkers in this country is to penalise everyone, whether they are part of the problem or not.

But perhaps a better idea would be to relocate the bouncers from the bar to the airport gate. Make barring lager louts from aircraft a thing. Tell them to go find a nightclub. Tell them their tickets are non-refundable.

Tell them to move aside now, please, because there is a queue of clear-headed flyers waiting to enjoy their existential panic in peace.