Hard-drinking passengers are causing problems at the Torp Airport in Sandefjord, which offers the most routes from Norway to destinations in Eastern Europe. Police are regularly called upon to help airport officials and airlines handle unruly and drunk travelers.
“We face a different drinking culture and attitudes towards what’s okay and what’s not,” Torp’s marketing chief Tine Kleive-Mathisen told newspaper Aftenposten just before the Easter holidays. She said airport officials have thus put up a sign in the airport’s tax-free shop, written in Polish, that it’s illegal to drink the contents of tax-free purchases in the terminal or on board the aircraft.
Not everyone pays attention to that, with some passengers known to guzzle their bottles of vodka or other alcoholic beverages while waiting for their flights. Petter Johansen, chief of the police station at Torp, told Aftenposten that passengers heading for destinations in Poland, Lithuania and Romania are overrepresented among those who are so drunk that police must be called in to control them.
The captains on board the aircraft have the final say on whether drunken passengers will be allowed on board. Torp is served primarily by WizzAir and Ryanair.
newsinenglish.no staff
