You never know who you might end up sitting next to on your flight to Lanzarote. Only last month a couple returning from the island on a Jet2 flight to Leeds/Bradford airport were arrested on arrival, as their drink fuelled fun and games got wildly out of hand. Whilst other airlines have taken the step of banning duty free alcohol carry on’s on some routes altogether, as happened recently with Ryanair and their Ibiza service.
But whilst you could be forgiven for assuming that it’s usually younger passengers who take getting into the holiday spirit that little too literally it would now appear that it’s the OAP’s that you really have to keep a close eye on. As a new survey commissioned by the holidayextras website reveals that it’s women aged 65 plus, not teenage tipplers, that are the real big in-flight imbibers.
The survey reveals that this demographic is far more likely to drink – and drink more – than any other gender or age group and are four times more likely to consume a whopping eight units of alcohol than your average passenger before they have even boarded their flight. Whilst overall, 30% of men and 25% of women confess to getting a drink down before take-off.
By contrast younger travelers are far more likely to abstain, with 66% of males aged 18 to 24 years consuming nothing or just one unit. According to a holidayextras spokesperson ‘While our poll is certainly not meant to point the finger at any particular group, it’s interesting to see that the big drinkers may not fall into the demographic that many will expect. We also found that two thirds of people abstain from drinking anything before going on holiday – so, while any incidents of disorderly behaviour do need to be tackled, it’s an issue that most of us can hopefully avoid on our next break away.’
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