Wetherspoon boss Sir Tim Martin has hit back against Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary’s call to ban the early morning airport pint – calling it a ‘Big Brother’ approach.
Sir Tim said that banning the early morning travel ritual that so many Britons follow could lead to passengers being breathalysed before flying.
He argued that the pub chain – which has a heavy presence in UK airports – makes most of its money from food, soft drinks, tea and coffee sales rather than alcohol.
But Mr O’Leary said that flights are now having to be diverted almost daily due to drunken bad behaviour, suggesting airport alcohol sales should be outlawed in the mornings and a potential two-drink per person limit.
He added that airport bars are ‘profiteering’ off the issue and ‘exporting the problem’ of drunkenness onto airlines.
While Sir Tim did admit that good behaviour at airports and on flights is in everyone’s interest, he said that implementing these suggestions would be difficult to manage.
He told The Times: ‘A two-drink limit would be extraordinarily difficult to implement, short of breathalysing passengers, and would, in our opinion, be an overreaction – especially since many of the problems stem from incoming flights.’
In the last six months, two-thirds of Wetherspoon’s takings were not from alcohol, Sir Tim said, adding that a ‘significant portion’ of alcoholic drinks were ordered with a meal.
Wetherspoon founder and CEO Sir Tim Martin has hit back at Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary’s ‘Big Brother’ esque calls to limit airport pints and said passengers could be breathalysed
Michael O’Leary said that Ryainair is having to divert flights almost daily due to drunken bad behaviour and said airport bars are ‘profiteering’ off the issue and ‘exporting’ it to airlines
He contended that imposing limits could turn passengers to buy their alcohol from supermarkets and off-licences before arriving at the airport.
Airport Wetherspoon pubs are ‘highly supervised’ and have policies to stop excessive drinking too, Sir Tim said.
It’s passengers coming in from other airports where ‘controls are perhaps less’ which make the problem worse, Sir Tim said, adding that this was a view ‘shared by Mr O’Leary’.
Richard Holden, the Tory shadow transport secretary, blasted Mr O’Leary’s suggestions as ‘draconian’ on the peculiar British ‘tradition’.
Mr O’Leary previously said: ‘I fail to understand why anybody in airport bars is serving people at five or six o’clock in the morning. Who needs to be drinking beer at that time?’
Airport bars are not governed by traditional licensing laws so can serve alcohol at irregular operating hours.
Mr O’Leary proposed they should be brought in line with external licensing in hopes of abating the problem.
He added that Ryanair is’ reasonably responsible’ with its drinks, rarely serving a passenger more than two beverages on board – unlike airport bars.
Ryanair and Wetherspoon pubs have clashed on this issue before, when in 2024 Mr O’Leary made the same call for a two-drink limit in airports.
Other airlines like Jet2 are lobbying for a national database to help ban disruptive passengers flying on UK airlines.
It is a criminal offence to be drunk on board an aircraft and anyone convicted faces up to two years in prison and a hefty fine.
Threatening and abusive passengers can be further prosecuted. If the flight has to be diverted, offenders can be ordered to pay large compensation fees and be charged in the country where the aircraft is forced to land.
There have been a huge number of incidents of drunken incidents on planes and the Ryanair boss says flights from Britain to Ibiza, Alicante and Tenerife are the worst for forced diversions.
A Ryanair flight set to land in Ibiza descended into partying chaos as passengers started singing and dancing
Those involved said the atmosphere was positive, and children were joining in with the fun
On April 26 a rowdy Ryanair flight from Newcastle upon Tyne to Ibiza descended into a mid-air party as dancing passengers ignored furious cabin crew.
Brandon Stephenson later said he received death threats after videos of the raucous flight went viral, racking up more than 250,000 views and 10,500 likes.
In another incident, a rowdy British stag party forced an easyJet flight to divert after they were seen vaping in their seats and abusing the cabin crew in May last year.
Six men were escorted off the plane in Faro, Portugal – hundreds of miles from their destination of Marrakech.
A further incident saw two drunken English passengers on a KLM flight from Amsterdam to Ibiza refuse to wear masks during the pandemic in August 2020.
A brawl broke out in mid-air, which ended with them being arrested by Spanish police when they landed.
