Mr O’Leary issued his call after a British holidaymaker was last month convicted of sexually assaulting a flight attendant on a Ryanair flight from Newcastle to Majorca in 2023. The man touched the steward’s bottom “in a lewd way” after pretending he had credit card issues.
Last August a man was arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting an attendant before spitting on her boss on a Jet2 flight from Manchester to Ibiza. Also in 2023, four men were removed from an easyJet plane from Manchester to Tenerife that was forced to divert to Lanzarote after violent clashes.
Sinead Quinn, who is responsible for the training of Ryanair’s 14,000 cabin crew, said the company was having to resort to passenger bans and increasingly shared information on problem flyers with peers.
She said: “The UK Is most challenging, the regions in particular. But there’s no particular profile. You have groups of young people, but it can be families and those you least expect.”
The situation is exacerbated when flights are delayed and passengers drink for several hours before boarding, according to Mr O’Leary, who said drink-fuelled violence was also an issue aboard some services from Ireland and Germany.
He said: “The biggest problem we have is when you have a day of bad delays. People are waiting around at airports and they keep lorrying alcohol into them.
“Most of our passengers show up an hour before departure. That’s sufficient for two drinks. But if your flight is delayed by two or three hours you can’t be guzzling five, six, eight, ten pints of beer. Go and have a coffee or a cup of tea. It’s not an alcoholics’ outing.”
He added: “What we’re asking for won’t affect profit. The bars can still sell their drinks and food. And yet government agencies in the UK and across Europe don’t take it seriously.”