Ryanair has welcomed a ruling made by a Scottish court to convict a passenger who disrupted a flight between Edinburgh and Lanzarote in July 2024.
The airline said the flight was forced to turn back to the Scottish capital after the passenger was found to be smoking, consuming his own alcohol, and verbally abusing other passengers onboard.
Ryanair said the man was one of three disruptive passengers whose behaviour forced this flight to turn back to Edinburgh.
The Edinburgh Sheriff Court issued this passenger with a Community Payback Order and sentenced him to 225 hours of community service.
This ruling is the latest in a recent string of court proceedings filed by the airline, as the Irish carrier takes a stronger stance against disruptive passengers.
A Ryanair passenger was fined €2,000 by a court in Malta on March 28, 2025, after the passenger had been smoking onboard a Ryanair flight travelling from Cologne to Malta. Earlier in March, the airline also filed a criminal case through the Spanish courts against a “verbally abusive” passenger who claimed to be a UN diplomat with diplomatic immunity. The passenger was travelling Lanzarote to Santiago on January 17, 2025.
The airline again reaffirmed its “zero tolerance” approach towards passenger misconduct, with the airline's CEO Michael O'Leary having repeatedly called for a two-drink limit in airport bars to curb disruptive behaviour.