A drunk man in a flamenco dress urinated on me during an easyJet flight from Barcelona

I feared the worst at the departure gate. It was 10am at Barcelona Airport on a Sunday in early summer and I was soberly sipping a café con leche and waiting to board for London Gatwick. “Oy Oy, Choffers!” a British thirty-something male bellowed as he prodded the backside of another man, who was wobbly on his feet and clasping a bottle of rosé.

Choffers, clearly a soon-to-be-married groom, was in an advanced state of inebriation. As he emerged from his phalanx of fellow stags, I noted his attire: a flamenco dress with a spotted bodice that was straining to contain his beer belly.

“Please, God, don’t say they’re sitting next to me,” I said in silent prayer, while raising my eyebrows at a well-heeled Spanish family, who were, as one, recoiling at the scene.

I boarded the aircraft as the stags dawdled, downing their remaining drinks. “Long-arm it, Choffers, you p****!”

The dread set in 10 minutes later, when I noticed the row ahead of me was empty, as were the seats to my immediate right and left. Clearly I’d angered the gods of the Ramblas in some way and was in for a long journey. A few minutes later, the stags shambled to their seats, with Choffers to my immediate left, on a seat next to the aisle.

For the first 30 minutes of the flight, the stags were joshing and garrulous. Choffers was supplied with more rosé miniatures (why rosé, I wondered?). I began to suspect the boozy bunch hadn’t been to sleep the night before, and perhaps the night preceding that.

The first problem arose when Choffers started getting restless as we entered some turbulence. “Sit down, sir, please, the seat belt sign has gone on,” said a motherly member of the flight crew in soothing tones. Choffers eventually nodded and complied. Ten minutes later, the seat belt sign was off, and one of the stags was quizzing me about my marital status.

I glanced around, and considered asking to be moved – there appeared to be a vacant seat near the window a few rows back. I was about to reach for my laptop and make a run for it, when it happened. A very green-at-the-gills Choffers stood up, leant against my row of seats, and urinated through his miniskirt on to my seat, and me.

“Oh my God!” a woman in the aisle across shrieked. “Oh! My! God!”

Safety concerns

My brush with in-flight boorishness came to mind on Monday, when Ryanair issued a statement detailing the costs incurred as a direct result of a disruptive passenger on board its flight from Dublin to Lanzarote last April.

Ryanair is seeking €15,000 (£12,650) in damages from the unnamed Irish passenger to cover the bill for extra fuel, accommodation for more than 160 passengers and crew, landing fees, and legal expenses. In a statement on its corporate website, a Ryanair spokesman said: “European [governments] repeatedly fail to take action when disruptive passengers threaten aircraft safety and force them to divert. It is time that EU authorities take action to limit the sale of alcohol at airports.”

The spokesman added: “We fail to understand why passengers at airports are not limited to two alcoholic drinks (using their boarding pass, in exactly the same way they limit duty-free sales), as this would result in safer and better passenger behaviour on board aircraft, and a safer travel experience for passengers and crews all over Europe.”

In a briefing note prepared for the UK Department for Transport, researchers defined disruptive and unruly passengers as those engaging in behaviour ranging from verbal abuse (Level 1) through to attempts to breach the flight deck (Level 4). The note states that such incidents have risen sharply in recent years, to more than 10,000 reports each year, compared with around 500 such reports in 2007.

According to data collected by the International Air Transport Association, 31 per cent of these incidents involve alcohol intoxication, 26 per cent non-compliance with smoking regulations, 17 per cent non-compliance with other regulations, 8 per cent disputes with other passengers, 2 per cent security threats and 1 per cent issues relating to passenger support animals.

The highest rates of such incidents are seen in mainland Europe (more than 2,000 a year), the United Kingdom (around 500), the United States (around 90) and New Zealand (around 60).

Examples given in the briefing note of unruly behaviour include the case of Guilherme Alves De Melo, a Brazilian passenger who became verbally and physically disruptive to other passengers and flight crew and went on to “eat part of his boarding pass” on a flight from Calgary to Chicago; a female passenger on a Virgin Australia flight from Melbourne to Perth who “became disruptive to other passengers and crew by making death threats”; and a man, possibly living out a James Bond fantasy, who “wearing only his underwear, jumped a security fence at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, ran on to Runway 27 and jumped on to the wing of the recently landed aircraft”.

‘They are always British’

A quick survey of friends and acquaintances finds that brushes with unruly passengers are somewhat routine, suggesting the official figures merely scratch at the surface of an even wider problem. Lydia Berman tells me she has “awful memories” of an Etihad flight on which “some drunk guys just used the back of the plane as a toilet as they didn’t like plane loos and the poor staff were helpless to intervene”.

Maya Middlemiss, a frequent traveller on Alicante-to-Gatwick flights, tells me she has seen it all, including “singing Welsh hen nights, guys in matching dresses, the police having to board and arrest people – and they are always British, I’m embarrassed to say!”

Even celebrities are not immune to unsavoury inflight behaviour. In 2011, French actor Gérard Depardieu urinated in front of passengers on an Air France flight to Dublin when the cabin crew refused to let him use the on-board toilet as the aircraft was preparing for take-off.

A statement issued on Depardieu’s behalf to French media cited prostate problems, adding that his friend and fellow actor Edouard Baer had passed him a bottle to urinate into, which had overflowed. At the time, Depardieu was removed from the aircraft.

Harsh penalties

Disruptive and unruly passenger behaviour contravenes the Tokyo Convention 1963, which has been incorporated into national aviation laws internationally. Many countries also have stringent national rules, including China, where unruly passengers can wind up in “administrative detention” for 10 days; India, where they can be permanently banned from flying; and the US, where they can be criminally prosecuted and face fines of up to £20,000.

In the UK, penalties for disruptive behaviour are dependent upon the severity of the behaviour, as outlined in the Civil Aviation Act 1982, Section 61, and may result in imprisonment or a fine exceeding the statutory maximum (£5,000).
European Union authorities have yet to respond to Ryanair’s call for legal limits on airport drinking, but would I welcome such stringent pre-flight regulations? Where dissolute British stags are involved, certainly.

Following Choffers’ flagrant micturition, the easyJet cabin crew swiftly stepped in to wipe down seats, as well as Choffers, who shamefacedly moved to the front of the plane as his fellow stags stared at their laps. I was relocated a few rows back and supplied with free cake and coffee. It’s clear the easyJet staff were trained for such events and took it all in their stride. I didn’t report the event at the time, being overjoyed to escape the scene on landing at Gatwick.

When asked to respond to this piece, easyJet asked Telegraph Travel for details of the flight so it could investigate the incident. It added: “Safety is our highest priority and we have strict guidelines about the consumption of alcohol on board and any passenger who appears to be under the influence of alcohol will be refused further alcohol. We do not tolerate disruptive behaviour on board and our cabin and ground crew are trained to assess any disruptive incidents and act quickly and appropriately.”