Everyone agrees drunk plane passengers are a problem - nobody agrees on how to fix it

By Lilit Marcus, CNN

Writer Amelia Mularz was on a Chicago-to-Los Angeles redeye earlier this year when a very drunk passenger plopped into the seat next to hers.

As the plane pulled back from the gate, the man ran to the bathroom and, she says, threw up so much that a cleaning crew had to be called in from the airport. The passenger was then removed from the flight and the plane took off an hour late.

But Mularz is far from being the only passenger who has been a first-hand witness to bad plane behaviour.

When University of Texas at Dallas criminology professor Lynne M. Vieraitis analysed years' worth of in-flight passenger incident reports, she found one common theme.

"Alcohol. Alcohol. Alcohol."

Vieraitis and her colleague Sheryl Skaggs went through 1600 complaints filed with the Aviation Safety Reporting System, breaking down reports about misbehaving passengers into categories such as verbal abuse, physical violence and sexual harassment.

"People getting into fights, people arguing with each other, not putting luggage away, not listening to directions - alcohol. Sexual assault and harassment - alcohol. The overwhelming thing reported in all these narratives was alcohol."

That news may not come as a shock to anyone who has witnessed a badly behaved passenger up close. According to a report from the Institute of Alcohol Studies, 60 percent of adults from the UK say that they have dealt with drunk plane passengers, and 51 percent of those surveyed believe there is a "serious problem" with intoxicated travellers on flights.

Stories about drunk fliers abound. There was the man who tried to open the plane's emergency door mid-flight and was duct-taped into his seat, and the off-duty pilot who caused chaos on an Alaska Airlines plane last year. And there are plenty more where those came from.

Many, many people agree that drunk plane passengers cause problems on board - from being annoying at best, to assaulting other passengers and crew members at worst. What no one can agree on, though, is whose job it is to solve it.

Playing the blame game

The incident reports that Vieraitis found on ASRS were all submitted by airline staffers - either pilots, gate agents or flight attendants. Participation in ASRS is voluntary, but it can serve as a place for employees to vent about the companies they work for.

"If you look at surveys of flight attendants, they say they can report things to their employer, but they don't feel like anything is done, they don't feel like the airline has their back," she says.

And the unique challenges of being a flight attendant can exacerbate issues, since their workspace is a metal tube 30,000 feet in the air. "You can't kick somebody out of the bar," says Vieraitis.

While some flight attendants receive specialized training for dealing with drunk, violent or abusive passengers, it's not always enough when they're expected to handle a belligerent flier while also serving food and doing safety checks.

"Flight attendants are highly trained safety professionals equipped with de-escalation techniques to manage disruptive passengers and protect everyone onboard," a spokesperson for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants union tells CNN.

"Inflight passenger disruptions have never been - and will never be - tolerated."

There are many reasons that passengers drink. Some report that alcohol helps calm their nerves if they have a fear of flying, while others say that having a drink or two helps them sleep on the aircraft. Others admit to drinking more than they planned due to a delay, or say they didn't realize they were intoxicated until getting on board, where dehydration and cabin pressure can intensify the effects of alcohol.

Vieraitis believes there may be a link between poor customer service and unruly passengers. The average airplane seat pitch has shrunk from 31-35 inches to 30-31, and reduced overhead bin space may mean that travellers wind up paying a fee to check their carry-on bag because there's no place left to stow it.

Frustrated passengers plus alcohol can be a dangerous combination.

Mularz, the writer who witnessed her drunk seatmate puke up his last few meals, says crew members did a great job handling the situation on her flight.

However, she adds, there were some rumblings of internal disagreements.

"The flight attendants said they were annoyed with the gate agent for not flagging the drunk passenger to begin with," she says. "For a second I even wondered if I was supposed to flag that he was drunk, but then I realized how bizarre that'd be to tattle on a fellow adult."

Mularz's story highlights how disagreements about jurisdiction can make it difficult to deal with abusive passengers. In-flight crew members might pin the blame on ground staff, as they did in her story. But airlines themselves might say that airport bars and restaurants are responsible for letting people get drunk before they fly.

Budget carrier Ryanair, which is Europe's busiest airline, has repeatedly called for airport bars and restaurants to impose drinking curbs in the face of repeated inflight incidents involving intoxicated passengers.

"It's completely unfair that airports can profit from the unlimited sale of alcohol to passengers and leave the airlines to deal with the safety consequences," Kenny Jacobs, who was chief marketing officer of Ryanair at the time, said in a 2017 statement. "Given that all our flights are short-haul, very little alcohol is actually sold on board, so it's incumbent on the airports to introduce these preventative measures to curb excessive drinking and the problems it creates, rather than allowing passengers to drink to excess before their flights."

Ryanair's message hasn't changed. CEO Michael O'Leary said that there is a direct correlation between substance use and violent outbursts on planes.

"In the old days, people who drank too much would eventually fall over or fall asleep," he said in an interview last year. "But now those passengers are also on tablets and powder. It's the mix. You get much more aggressive behaviour that becomes very difficult to manage."

O'Leary has called for a two-drink maximum in airports and says that cabin crew members on Ryanair flights to "party destinations" like Ibiza have complained to management about chronic problems with intoxicated travellers.

CNN reached out to United, Delta and American Airlines, all of whom declined to comment on onboard alcohol policies or how they train their staff to deal with intoxicated passengers.

Meting out punishments

For flights within the United States, the FAA has jurisdiction for handling misconduct on board.

In 2022, the FAA handed out its largest fine ever to an individual passenger: $81,950 to a woman who "spit at, headbutted, bit and tried to kick the crew and other passengers" and was restrained with flex cuffs after trying to open a plane door mid-flight.

Airlines also have the discretion to ban specific passengers, like the man who got blocked from flying Spirit Airlines ever again after he was caught vaping in the airplane bathroom.

Still, there is one major reason that the industry is so loath to restrict alcohol: money. According to travel industry analysts, alcohol is one of the biggest money-makers for airlines and airports. The higher-priced seats in first and business class often come with unlimited alcohol.

More than a dozen airports around the world, from Sydney to London Heathrow, declined to state how much money they earn from alcohol sales.

But the number of people who support bans or restrictions on airport alcohol appears to be growing. The Institute of Alcohol Studies report about bad behaviour on planes showed that 67 percent of respondents were in favour of a drink limit at airports, and 64 percent said they were OK with breathalyzers being used before letting passengers board their flights.

- CNN