The chief executive of Europe’s largest airline has put customers on notice it will prosecute disruptive passengers as between two and three flights a week are diverted due to poor behaviour on Ryanair flights.
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary told Sky News: “If passengers continue disrupting our flights, we will sue you for the cost of those diversions and those disruptions.”
He later told Sky’s Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge: “Airports are still the only places where there are no licensing laws. You could be buying pints at 6am in the morning. Who needs to be drinking pints at 6am in the morning?
“We’re trying to be a bit more sensible. Just behave. We don’t allow you to drink and drive. All we’re saying is drink a little less before you fly, and then let everybody have a better flight experience.”
Earlier this month the low-cost airline said it had launched legal action against a passenger who, Ryanair said, cost the carrier £12,500 as it was forced to land early and put passengers up in Porto for a night, rather than continue to the end destination.
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While such diversions are a minority of the 3,500 daily Ryanair flights, Mr O’Leary said: “We’re having two or three of these diversions a week. That’s two or three too many.”
He reiterated his call for a two-alcoholic drink limit in airports but said he would be happy for a three-drink cap.
“We don’t care what the number is, but there just needs to be a little bit more common sense about it,” Mr O’Leary said.
Ryanair was happy to restrict alcohol sales on its flights, he added.
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The call for a drinks limit has not been received well by airports, Mr O’Leary said: “Airports have responded badly as they always do, they want to be filling people full of alcohol, particularly when flights are delayed.”
Criticism was levelled not just at Chancellor Rachel Reeves‘s newly announced support for a third runway at Heathrow, but at the airport itself.
When asked if a third runway at the UK’s busiest airport would induce Ryanair to fly to and from the site, Mr O’Leary said the airline had no interest and it would “never go there” as it was so “incredibly operationally inefficient”.
“Even if it was free, we wouldn’t go to Heathrow. Because if we have to take an hour, an hour and 15 to turn around a plane, we lose those two extra flights per day per aircraft in our operation.”
Mr O’Leary said the “odds are against” a third runway even being built.
The problem was not capacity at airports, he added: “There’s lots of underused airports that we could start growing in today.”
The airline is Europe’s biggest by route, passenger and aircraft numbers.
Heathrow has been contacted for comment.
