Suzanne Harrington: I find myself agreeing with Michael O'Leary about alcohol on planes
At Irish Examiner Michael On Suzanne With A Addressing Boss O'leary, Something Ryanair Conference Accord Historic Press A Harrington Recent Columnist
At yoga, the man on the mat next to mine is exhausted.
He’s just back from the Caribbean, which sounds dead glamorous, except it’s not because he was there for work – he’s cabin crew on a holiday airline.
He says he feels more dead than glamorous. Not because of the jet-lag – he’s used to that – but because of the passengers.
Long haul drunks, he whispers. People drinking vodka at seven in the morning because they’re in holiday mode.
People double-ordering drinks before they’ve had breakfast. He says it’s like being a kindergarten teacher to a bunch of pissed unruly adults.
To stay sane, he brings his yoga mat everywhere, so he can practice when he gets to the destination, before turning around and working the same flight in reverse.
It's not often – that is, it has never happened before in my entire adult life – that I would find myself even vaguely agreeing with the proprietor of Ryanair.
Yet here I am, thinking of my yoga friend, and nodding as I read about Michael O’Leary’s suggestion of restricting airline passengers to two alcoholic drinks before a flight.
Because is getting rat-arsed on Prosecco a human right? Or is doing your job without having to negatively navigate those rat-arsed on Prosecco more of a human right?
Two more questions – firstly, why should anyone in the workplace, unless they’re an actual bouncer with actual combat training, have to deal head on with drunk people?
If you work in a bar, you get to eject them; you can’t do that on a plane. (Think of the cleaning bill 33,000 feet below, never mind all the admin).
And secondly, do we need to look at why we equate being in holiday mode with double-dosing ourselves with alcohol?
Why does holiday mode mean drinking in the morning? Isn’t that more alcoholic mode?
What we do in the privacy of our own spaces is up to us; some drugs are illegal, others – the liquid ones – are glamorised, packaged, marketed at us, so that we internalise that messaging and consume accordingly, creating enormous profit for someone who isn’t you. Whatever. Your call.
But combine ‘holiday mode’ with the fact that we metabolise alcohol less efficiently at high altitude – we get drunker faster – and we have mid air punch-ups, diverted flights, ruined trips.
Do you want to be stuck in a metal tube with that, even if you’re a dozen rows away? Me neither. Yet it continues to happen, flight in, flight out, with gruesome regularity.
We banned smoking from flights because smoking impacts everyone around it, not just the smoker.
Do we need to ban drink too, given how drinking affects more than just the drinker?
Or is there a better way of reframing our idea of ‘holiday mode’ that doesn’t leave cabin crew shattered from drunk-wrangling?
I mean, come on, there must be. We’re adults.
