Europe’s largest airline has seen a “notable rise” in bad behaviour caused by drunken and drugged behaviour, which has become the biggest issue cabin crew are dealing with.
There’s now a higher rate of people on “powder” or “tablets” and alcohol which brings on more aggressive behaviour, Ryanair‘s chief executive Michael O’Leary said.
A growing problem
Mr O’Leary also said that the budget airline has to deal with assault cases on a weekly basis.
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The problem is experienced across airlines and is Europe-wide but travel from beach destinations like Ibiza and Greek islands to regional airports including Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester and Edinburgh flights is “notably bad”.
It’s on those flights that measures such as bag searches take place to ensure no alcohol is brought on board a flight, though Mr O’Leary said there are problems on flights to and from Ireland and Germany.
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“Ibiza is by far and away the worst destination for it,” Mr O’Leary added.
The culprits are often the people “you least expect” and fit no particular profile, the carrier’s director of inflight Sinead Quinn said.
Passengers fighting each other was also described as a growing trend by Mr O’Leary.
Cheaper flights?
After two years of airfares rising by about 20%, they have begun to fall with Mr O’Leary estimating they would drop a further 5% coming into winter.
It won’t be until summer 2025 that prices will reach 2023 levels, he told Sky News.
Another global IT outage?
The global IT outage in July which played havoc with global air travel and caused days of flight delays and cancellations could happen again, he added.
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“I think we can never say there won’t be another one,” he said. “We live in a digital age and I live in fear all the time about my reservation system crashing or digital payments going wrong… everybody’s business, everybody’s experience on a daily basis is at the mercy of these major IT providers”.
