The man from the stag party boarded the 8am EasyJet flight from Spain to London Gatwick with bloodshot eyes, wearing a flamenco dress with a red frill that barely covered his bottom.
Glugging back miniature bottles of rosé wine, and egged on by his rowdy friends, he leered at the air hostess, tried to smoke in the toilet and attempted to break into the plane’s cockpit.
But his lewdest offence was directed at the unfortunate woman seated next to him. ‘About 90 minutes into the flight he stood up to find the lavatory before urinating on me instead,’ recalls Sally Howard, 40.
Tracey Bolton, 39, a mother-of-three from Bolton, was pictured straddling sous chef Shaun Edmondson, 31, on a Manchester to Ibiza Ryanair flight in a ‘drunken moment of madness’
‘I was shocked, angry and upset. He had intimidated me throughout the flight and was so drunk I was surprised he was allowed to fly in the first place.’
Sally is far from alone in having an unpleasant ordeal on a flight because of a drunken passenger. As highlighted by a BBC Panorama documentary last week, the number of air passengers arrested for drunken misbehaviour on British flights or at British airports has risen by 50 per cent in the past year.
A survey of 4,000 cabin crew by Unite, meanwhile, found that one in five has been assaulted during a flight, and more than half have either experienced or witnessed verbal, sexual or physical harassment.
Last week also brought the story of newlyweds Darren and Nadia Stanway, who got so drunk before their honeymoon flight to Malta that concerned airline staff called the police.
Darren, 39, from Congleton in Cheshire, said he had been drinking beer and that Nadia, 34, had downed three bottles of wine in their taxi to Manchester Airport last month. Arriving too late to board their plane, the couple had a furious row and Darren was charged with public disorder.
Back in May, a Virgin Atlantic flight from London to Jamaica had to make an unscheduled landing in Bermuda after a drunken man allegedly became abusive to cabin crew.
In June, a smartphone video clip of mother-of-three Tracey Bolton, 39, straddling sous chef Shaun Edmondson, 31, on a Manchester to Ibiza Ryanair flight went viral on social media. Tracey, an ordinarily respectable café owner, described herself as ‘mortified’ by the incident and blamed ‘drunken madness’.
I think the crew were too scared to refuse service
A voluntary code of conduct introduced by the aviation industry last July, in which airlines and airports agreed to policies such as requesting that staff didn’t sell alcohol to drunken passengers, and warning passengers not to consume duty-free purchases on board, appears to have fallen on deaf ears. But why?
Airside licensing laws that allow us to quaff champagne at airport cafes at the crack of dawn, and a demob-happy holiday mentality compelling us to celebrate with booze before we even take off, certainly play a part.
Then there are the budget airlines that appear keen to subsidise ever-decreasing flight prices with alcohol sales. Meanwhile, beleaguered cabin crews often seem powerless to stop passengers drinking.
A toxic mix, then, that many of us will encounter this summer — if we haven’t already — and one that is still etched on Sally’s mind four years afterwards.
After spending a week holidaying with friends in June 2013, Sally, an author from London who has a one-year-old son, Leo, with partner Tim, 36, a lawyer, had viewed her return journey as a chance to collect her thoughts as she travelled home alone.
But, entering the departure lounge at Barcelona airport, she realised that this was unlikely to happen.
‘There was a stag party of around ten middle-aged British men, all drinking alcohol. They looked like they had been awake all night,’ recalls Sally, whose heart sank when one of the party — the man in the flamenco dress — sat next to her on the plane.
‘He made sexist advances like “you’re all right looking, aren’t you love?” and tried to grab the air hostess’s bum.
‘She told him and his friends to stop misbehaving but they didn’t listen. I tried not to engage but it was intimidating.’
Charlotte Harris, 30, an accounts assistant from London, rowed with boyfriend James after having too much to drink
Despite the party’s drunkenness, cabin crew were still willing to let them order alcohol — and after an hour the man next to Sally was barely coherent.
‘He’d already been caught staggering to the toilet with cigarettes,’ she says. ‘He got up to go back to the lavatory but was too drunk to realise he hadn’t made it and relieved himself at his seat instead.
‘The urine came out from under his dress and onto my trousers. Afterwards he mumbled an embarrassed apology. I was too shocked to speak.’
As a concerned male passenger swapped seats with Sally, the man stumbled off to open the door to the plane’s cockpit.
‘Cabin crew told him he’d be arrested if he didn’t sit down. It seemed to finally sink in that he could be in trouble and he obeyed,’ says Sally.
‘Had I not seen how stressed the airline staff were, I would have complained. The man shouldn’t have been allowed on in the first place and shouldn’t have been able to carry on drinking.’
With airside cafes, bars and duty-free shops exempt from licensing laws, passengers spend around £300 million on alcohol at UK airports each year — about a fifth of total retail sales.
A House of Lords report this April recommended that restrictions on alcohol sales at airports should be applied, but the idea has been deemed too difficult to implement.
Last April, 47-year-old Kieran Bright shared his EasyJet flight from Bristol to Alicante in Spain — statistically one of the most drunken routes, along with Ibiza and Palma de Majorca — with four stag and hen groups.
‘They milled around bars in the departure lounge wearing fancy dress, which would have been normal if it were Saturday night. But it was 6am,’ says Kieran, a learning disability support worker.
On board, the groups conducted lewd conversations across the aisles.
Kieran recalls: ‘They swore constantly and boasted of how much sex they were going to have. One hen talked about how she was going to get a tattoo of a cat on her genitals. Another was swigging Bombay Sapphire gin that she seemed to have brought on board from duty free.
‘At one point there were 20 men standing up and shouting aggressively. None of them could walk in a straight line and one lurched across my legs whenever the trolley came past. I worried that he’d pummel me if I asked him to move or suggested he keep quiet.’
What riles Kieran most is that the cabin crew appeared to do nothing to stem the drunkenness. ‘All the parties were served vodka throughout the flight, which was outrageous,’ he says.
Each airline sets its own rules about alcohol and there is no limit on how much passengers can drink on a flight. It is a criminal offence to be intoxicated on board, however, and passengers are not permitted to drink alcohol they purchase duty-free.
Sometimes passengers who wouldn’t dream of losing control in the ‘real world’ drink to alleviate the stress of flying. Take Charlotte Harris, 30, a usually demure accounts assistant from London, for whom fear and excitement at her first holiday with boyfriend James proved ruinous.
The couple had been together for three months when they took their 9.45am EasyJet flight from Gatwick to Benidorm, Spain, in March 2015.
‘I was nervous about flying as I’d only been on a plane once before,’ says Charlotte. ‘I would never normally drink at that time of day but I decided a couple of vodka, lime and tonics would help steady my nerves.’
Darren and Nadia Stanway, from Congleton, in Cheshire, arrived blind drunk and too late for their flight before and argument broke out and Darren was charged with disorder
After the plane took off, she and James, 29, carried on drinking because, she says, ‘we were euphoric with the excitement of going away’.
Charlotte says it wasn’t until an hour into her flight that she was ‘tipped over the edge’ by the five vodka and tonics she had consumed: ‘I suddenly felt very tipsy and unsteady on my feet. I wouldn’t normally have been this affected by that amount of alcohol — I’m not sure if it had something to do with being up in the air.’
She might be right. According to flight industry regulator the Civil Aviation Authority, low air pressure when flying effectively thins the blood, making us feel drunker quicker. Other experts say the dehydration experienced on planes can make us more inebriated.
James, who had four vodkas himself, also felt the effects and made a remark that triggered an unprecedented row between the two. ‘He said the stewardess had a nice bottom,’ recalls Charlotte.
Drunk, she saw red: ‘I accused him of looking at other women. He said I was being silly and that he had only been joking. Our voices grew louder and louder and people kept turning round to look at us.’
When the stewardess in question asked them to keep their voices down, a jealous Charlotte grew further enraged. ‘I told her to mind her own business,’ she admits, ‘and we carried on arguing.’
Five minutes later, the air hostess returned with a stark warning. ‘She told us we were upsetting other passengers and that if we weren’t quiet we would be detained by security on landing.’
The couple kept quiet for the rest of the flight. ‘I ate, slept and started to sober up,’ says Charlotte.
As she did, she realised what a fool she had made of herself. ‘Mortified, I apologised to the air hostess. My behaviour was completely out of character.’
During her two years with Virgin Atlantic, former air hostess Stephanie Davenport, 35, says three of her passengers were so inebriated they required the airline’s ‘restraint kit’, which renders them immobile with handcuffs and a belt attached to their upper body.
People shouted, spat and swore at me when drunk
One was a man in his 30s flying to Jamaica who exposed himself to a female passenger next to him. ‘He was arrested on landing and banned from flying with Virgin for life,’ says Stephanie, from Buckinghamshire.
‘Another was a middle-aged man who became abusive and agitated. We couldn’t work out how he’d got into this state until we found an empty whisky bottle in the toilet bin that he’d obviously bought from duty free.’
Since resigning in 2010, Stephanie, now a lecturer, says behaviour in-flight has only grown worse. ‘The last few times I’ve travelled have been atrocious,’ she says.
‘On a Jet2 flight from Birmingham to Girona recently, my husband and I were surrounded by a group of middle-aged men who were making racist remarks and leering at the female cabin crew.
‘One had three whiskies, a gin and a cider and was still allowed to order more. I think the crew were too scared of confrontation to refuse service.’
Could staff morale be an issue? Stephanie, whose basic air hostess salary was just £12,000 a year, believes low morale plays a part in lapsed discipline.
‘Cabin crew get paid a pittance in return for dreadful abuse,’ she says. ‘I think they’ve lost all confidence to say no.’
Mandy Smith, who worked for Virgin Atlantic between 1996 and 2012, says her job was made a misery by drunks on board.
‘People shouted, spat and swore at me when drunk,’ she says. ‘Lots thought it was funny to stick their hands up my skirt — they wouldn’t have had the nerve if they hadn’t been drinking.
‘The first time it happened I was shocked but I learnt to bash their hands away and, sadly, saw it as part of the job,’ says Mandy, 43, from Brighton, who is married with a six-year-old daughter.
‘On one long-haul flight to Las Vegas, a couple who were flying out to get married with their wedding party had a massive argument in the aisle after the groom-to-be accused his bride of sleeping with the best man. They were escorted off as soon as we landed and immediately deported.’
Mandy — who has written a book, Cabin Fever, about her experiences as an air hostess — had tried to stop the bride drinking.
‘I told her I wouldn’t serve her more alcohol unless she ate but later discovered she’d stashed her dinner under her seat.’
She says she and the other crew did everything they could to limit drunken behaviour. ‘We confiscated alcohol brought in from duty free and kept notes on a board that flagged up the seat numbers of those who’d had too much drink.’
Steps are finally being taken to tackle the problem. The Home Office has said it is considering tougher rules on alcohol, while Ryanair has demanded that airports ban sales of alcohol before 10am and limit passengers to two drinks before boarding.
Fellow low-cost airline Jet2 has already banned alcohol sales on flights before 8am.
A spokesman for EasyJet told the Mail it has a duty to ensure ‘the safety and wellbeing of all on board’ and that its staff are trained to evaluate and act quickly on all disruptive incidents.
He said EasyJet does not tolerate abusive or threatening behaviour and refuses alcohol to those who appear to be under the influence, adding: ‘Typically it is the alcohol consumed and/or bought in the airport that is the major factor of disruption in the air, so we strongly believe licensing laws need to be introduced at airports to control the sale of alcohol — and the consumption of duty-free alcohol on board should be made illegal.’
Mandy is adamant that better regulation is required. ‘You shouldn’t be able to buy champagne with your breakfast at airports,’ she says.
‘And passengers who abuse cabin crew should be banned from flying for life.’