O’Leary said drunk passengers who could “stand up and shuffle” onto their aircraft would often avoid detection, adding: “Then when the plane takes off, we see the misbehaviour.
"We don’t want to begrudge people having a drink. But we don’t allow people to drink-drive, yet we keep putting them up in aircraft at 33,000 feet.”
O’Leary told The Daily Telegraph airports were “opposed” to introducing a limit on drinks. “[They] say their bars don’t serve drunken passengers,” said O’Leary. “But they do serve the relatives of the drunken passenger.”
He claimed UK flights to so-called “party destinations” like Ibiza and some Greek islands from regional airports including Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh were more prone to violent incidents.
Ryanair now searches cabin bags belonging to Ibiza-bound passengers before they are allowed to board.
“We used to only allow them to take bottles of water onboard, not realising that they were full of vodka," O’Leary continued. "Now we don’t even allow them to take those.
“In the old days, people who drank too much would eventually fall over or fall asleep. 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.
"And it’s not directed just at the crew. Passengers fighting with each other is now a growing trend onboard the aircraft.”
O’Leary’s plea for a drinks limit follows a series of incidents, including that of an "intoxicated" Jet2.com passenger who was jailed last year for 27 months after he abused flight crew and then pretended to be asleep.
Sinead Quinn, who is responsible for the training of Ryanair’s 14,000 cabin crew, argued passengers flying from the UK are the “most challenging”. “There’s no particular profile,” she said. “You have groups of young people, but it can be families and those you least expect.”
O’Leary said the “biggest problem” for Ryanair was when flights were badly delayed. “People are waiting around at airports and they keep lorrying alcohol into them,” he said.
“If your flight is delayed by two or three hours, you can’t be guzzling five, six, eight, 10 pints of beer. Go and have a coffee or a cup of tea. It’s not an alcoholics’ outing."
