ON Sunday afternoon I set out on a Ryanair flight from Prestwick to Dublin. The vast majority of my fellow passengers were dressed in green and white; it would have been obvious to even Inspector Clouseau that (a) they were Celtic supporters and (b) many of them had been celebrating the League Championship victory for every one of the past 24 hours.
It should be stressed that no-one among this merry band was creating any serious bother. They made it
up the steps of the plane without
too much difficulty, though a couple of their number appeared to be walking by remote control. Once seated, they sang.
The Fields of Athenry took a fair belting and it was followed by the usual repertoire, including that they did not care what certain other clubs said, they were the championes (sic). In the middle of this choral per-
formance two stewardesses went through the safety drill, totally drowned out by the music.
It was clear to me that, come any requirement to put on a life jacket or operate a mask, we could have a few problems. Still, it was a short flight and the crew were probably quite right just to humour them and hope all went smoothly.
After we took off, singing on our way to the skies, the stewardesses then took what I considered to be a very stupid step - they offered more drink. Not content with that, the fans were next given the chance to buy duty free goods.
Now I had just read, as I am sure that you did, that airlines were cracking down on drunken passengers. Those who caused trouble on flights, having had too much firewater,
were likely to face jail terms of up
to two years, plus a worldwide ban. Why then, I wondered, were people who were obviously not going to beat any breathalyser, being plied with more drink?
I do not wish to single out
Ryanair, which I have found to be
a very enterprising outfit. It has brought welcome competition on UK-Irish routes which, as previously operated by Aer Lingus, were extremely costly.
All airlines follow the same policy of supplying strong drink to passengers while being perfectly well
aware that, at altitude, this can have a much greater effect than when taken on the ground.
My wife and I flew with British
Airways to Boston at the start of our holiday a couple of years ago. Up front was an Edinburgh rugby team who demolished the plane's entire beer stock by the time we were two hours into the air. Like the Celtic party, they were perfectly friendly - at this stage - though I would not particularly have wished to share their company for another stage of the journey.
The rugby players did not wait until the stewardesses came around with the drinks trolley. They simply helped themselves from supplies
at the rear of the economy section. No-one from the crew gave them a second glance.
Now I am neither a teetotaller nor a believer in alcohol prohibition in the air. Indeed, as a non-smoker and an asthmatic, I have no problem with allowing passengers to have the odd puff on longer flights, provided they can be properly segregated. It does seem odd to sell customers cigarettes, then prohibit them from smoking the goods.
But I do believe airlines must put their own cabins in order unless they wish to invite a lot more trouble from unruly passengers. That ought to mean a strict limit on the number of drinks that will be supplied and the use of common sense when serving those who, for instance, have been subjected to long delays and are more likely to have propped up the bar for several hours.
And I pose this question. If, as they all tell us, our safety is paramount, why does every airline in the world carry large stocks of alcohol - a highly inflammable liquid - to flog as duty free goods? There is at the moment a high-powered campaign to protect the duty free industry from threats by the European Union which wishes to equalise duty throughout the community.
We are invited to sign petitions urging our Government to reconsider any such move and are told that ''thousands of jobs are at risk''. And, it is rarely pointed out, ''millions of pounds in profits''.
Duty free is, in fact, nothing of
the sort, it is duty limited and it includes a whopping margin which goes directly to the seller. As far as booze goes, the bargains are more imagined than real.
My local off-licence is currently selling a proprietary brand of whisky at just over #9. You could purchase a litre of the same at most duty shops for that price. Is it, though, such a snip to lug the litre all the way home in order to save a couple of quid?
Yet we are told that duty free is all part of the fun of travel. So passengers place bundles of bottles into the overhead rack which, if they fell on anyone, would put them into la-la land for a considerable period.
Would it not be cheaper, and certainly safer, if we simply accepted that equalised duty throughout the EU would be considerably fairer?
Airlines' attitude to drinking is rather like governments' attitudes to smoking. The activity is frowned upon, the revenue is welcomed.
That smacks of hypocrisy to me.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article