When you arrive at the airport at some ungodly hour, is your first stop coffee and breakfast, or an early morning pint? Readers will be unsurprised to know that I am firmly in the former camp, baulking at extortionate airport prices and rejecting anything that could worsen my inevitable flying headache. But if the outrage to Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary’s call to limit airport licensing hours is anything to go by, I am unusual. My fellow Brits seem to rejoice in a pre-flight tipple or two, in the firm belief that the holiday should begin as soon as they have passed through security.
The result, according to O’Leary (whose previous provocative suggestions include standing-only flights and charging for the use of aeroplane toilets mid-air), is a plague of in-flight drunkenness. Ryanair is apparently being forced to divert nearly a flight a day due to disruptive behaviour. If holidaymakers can’t control their boozing, the airline boss argues, airports should do it for them.
I find both this proposal and the ferocious chorus of “don’t ban my 6am airport beer” fascinating, not because of what it tells us about airports, but what it tells us about modern society. It is obvious the majority of airport drinkers can responsibly restrict their alcohol intake. It is equally obvious that a small handful cannot, and that this handful causes chaos for everyone else. Laws are, by definition, meant to apply to everyone equally – so attempts to deal with the disruptive group make life a bit more limited and less fun for people who are no problem at all.
As in airports, so in life. From drugs policy to policing football fans, security scanners to littering, rules are written with the aim of curbing the worst behaviour, often with little thought to how it might impact the silently well-behaved. As the think-tanker and former government trade official David Henig pointed out on social media, baked into the story of regulation across the world is an inability to figure out how to stop “a few people acting irresponsibly whether they be airport drinkers or bank CEOs”. And this blind spot has unintended consequences. “When politicians and others talk about new regulations, they very rarely consider what is already in place or how the new proposal would be implemented,” Henig told me. “This has led to a feeling of overload among many involved, such as businesses and regulators, that probably in turn makes it harder to achieve the desired policy goals.”
This regulatory overload doesn’t just create friction and frustration. Regulations that are not properly enforced erode trust, which has a psychological impact on how people respond to rules. There’s a sign in my local Tube station warning passengers that if they tapped in using their smartphone and have since run out of battery, tough – they’ll be fined. I spotted it while watching two men jump the ticket barrier, attracting barely a disinterested glance from station staff. The rationale is that leniency granted to unlucky rule-abiders could be exploited. But it creates perverse incentives: were my phone to go dead, it would make more sense for me to barge through the barrier consequence-free than plead for sympathy and risk a fine.
To return to O’Leary’s suggestion, my guess is the heaviest airport drinkers would respond to limited licensing hours with a couple of whisky miniatures or a quick trip to duty-free. For everyone else, the impact would be yet another prohibition on an already draconian transit experience – one that could be avoided by enforcing existing rules and turning away intoxicated passengers at the gate.
Any teacher will tell you that making the whole class stay after school to punish an unruly few often leads to more troublemakers in future – if you’re going to be punished regardless, where’s the incentive to be good? Those who too readily reach for the regulation button, in airports and beyond, might want to take note.
[Further reading: Why Britain is so poor – and will get poorer]
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This article appears in the 13 May 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Never-Ending Chaos
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