Robbie Gray

Summer has always been a time of rest, spending time in the sun or maybe even going on holiday. Most civilised people will book a flight and fly out to their chosen destination with mostly no fuss. But what about those that don’t arrive as smoothly.

Looking back on the summer, there was a massive rise in anti social behaviour incidents aboard flights. Lorraine Morrison a flight attendant for TUI said that there is a “Big rise, its getting worse”. There were 12 incidents of anti social behaviour on Scottish flights alone between February and July this year according to the Scottish Sun.

Lorraine said ” We have to observe and monitor passengers at every minute, in cases of bad behaviour the plane can be diverted, or the passenger can be banned from travelling for 5 years or more or even given a custodial sentence, but this doesn’t seem to stop people.

“Its starting to be that duty free planes aren’t allowing the sale of alcohol miniatures”

This statement ties in with the Ryanair CEOs plea to reduce alcohol sales in airports and planes outright.

“I can’t disclose specific examples but in these cases there is mainly alcohol and drugs behind it”

Leighann Stewart, a travel agent also working for TUI spoke about the backlash employees like her receive backlash.

“I’m constantly getting phone calls from people who have had their flights redirected because of idiots full of the drink.

“Theres really not much we can do at our end apart from apologise and say to customers that this isn’t something we condone.

With the theme building of typical lads holidays, Leighann reinforced this.

“When you’ve got these drunk men and ladies going on these lads and laddetes holidays, what are the flight attendants able to do it must be very scary

When asked what she would do to try and stop these incidents she said

“I think that they could not make alcohol as widely available on flights and in airports, its everywhere, its kind of asking for people to cause a scene.

“The way they’ve done it in some places in Europe now is they’re only allowing people a certain amount of drinks maybe they need to clamp down and say that flights are alcohol free, and if people are drunk they shouldn’t be allowed on planes.”

Listen to the full audio interview feature with Leighann here

With things looking bleak for airline staff as anti social behaviour runs rampant on planes, the answer on how to fix this may not be the one these companies want to hear. But with the aforementioned Ryanair CEO making big strides to assure these incidents don’t continue it is very possible that other companies will follow in his footsteps. I’m sure that UK flight attendants are praying that they are.