Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast. It's Wednesday the 28th of August,

incidentally one year to the day after the air traffic control meltdown, which saw 2,000 flights

cancelled and 700,000 people having their travel plans messed up. No such problems today, let's hope,

but I have been speaking to Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair about a range of

topics. Air rage, the European Union wanting to standardise cabin baggage. And first of all, how he's doing.

Very well, we're having a very busy summer. Traffic in Ryanair is up 8% and fares are down 5%. So

customers are getting a better deal travelling Ryanair and millions more customers want to fly with Ryanair.

Not great news for shareholders. Your one, I believe. That's true. I mean, our shareholders have seen the share price fall this year from around 20 euros a share. We're down at around, I think, 14 or 15 euros. But if the share price is falling because fares are getting cheaper, then while that's bad news in the short term for shareholders, over the medium term, it's good news um let's talk about air rage

if we may i understand that it's kind of an all-time high what is ryanair doing about it and what

would you like to be done more widely i mean we are seeing record numbers and we and most of the

airlines around europe are seeing a spike upwards particularly this this summer of disgruntled passengers on board. I think the real challenge is, one, flight delays are up at a record high this summer. So people are spending time in airports drinking before they board aircraft. And I think the critical thing is we've made submissions to the governments across Europe. We want two things. One, much more effective fines, finding passengers in the local magistrates when they're hauled off planes for disruptive behavior. And two, we need to have a ban on airports, not selling alcohol, but limiting the amount of alcohol that can be sold to

any pasture to two alcoholic drinks. So in the same way that you have to show your boarding

pass when you go through duty-free to buy cigarettes for alcohol, we believe you should have

to show your boarding pass to buy an alcoholic drink at a bar at an airport, and you shouldn't

be served more than two alcoholic drinks, particularly when flights are delayed.

The real challenge is when flights are running late and this summer ATC delays are at a all-time high, pastures tend to drink more alcohol, they become more inebriated and that's not

good news for when they're getting on board one, two, three-hour flights.

You've been appealing to the European Commission to sort out

air traffic control in Europe. They've also going to impose the entry-exit system, 10th of

November. That's going to be a complete pain given that your largest nation for departures

is the UK and we're the ones who, apart from going to Ireland, are going to end up having to have to be fingerprinted.

Is it going to mess up your schedules?

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