Drunken airline passengers are being arrested in record numbers, but don't pretend that this isn't what airports want

Perhaps it is time to call time on those beautifully lit, neatly stocked, expansive rows of vodka and gin with a lovely looking promo boy or girl offering you a snifter

Last orders: an advert at Stansted airport departures area urges passengers to enjoy ‘one last pint before you fly’ (Simon Calder)

It’s unsurprising perhaps to many readers that the Home Office is growing weary of boozed-up British holidaymakers. Not weary of them, I add, once they reach their resorts only to commence falling off mopeds, leaping off balconies and sniveling down the phone to the consulate from a Fuerteventuran prison. No, long before that.

Between February 2016 and February 2017 a quite remarkable 387 people were arrested for being drunk at UK airports, or on the ensuing flight. This is a 50 per cent rise in 12 months.

What was once, in the Eighties and Nineties a glorious holiday rite of passage, that gin and tonic in an airport bar signifying “clocking off” for a fortnight, has mutated into drunken stag-do brawls, slurring frequent fliers and grans on the lash who’ve had five too many.

Of course there is a strong argument that the only way to endure the peak-season Luton Airport easyJet queue is hammered to a point of just functioning. The queuing, the rushing, the chivvying and the waiting.

The fact that approximately one in five UK mothers will attempt to smuggle a six pack of Blackcurrant Fruit Shoots through the security clearance, then behave like it’s their own personal 9/11 when told “no”.

Travellers who pack 20kg too heavily then hold the check-in queue attempting to wear everything extra. Having your pedicure chipped by irritating brats on Trunkies.

The WHSmiths where all the paperbacks are weirdly enormous and proffered with a predatory offer of a 200g bar of Dairy Milk.

Anyone who brings portable stereo equipment on the airport shuttle.

Anyone who pays for speedy boarding then flaps about smugly when their flight is called. The fact that even though one may have been told to “Proceed to Gate 47” does not mean your designated airplane isn’t still in Rimini having Pringle-vomit mopped from the flight deck.

All of these things are why I drink at airports. All of them convince me that 10am isn’t merely a civil time to perch on a tall stool at Caviar House and start hoying back flutes of Taittinger, but in fact a sensible and thoroughly pragmatic vision.

That said, like the vast majority of British travellers, I tend to conduct the rest of my journey in an affable manner, with no real want to punch or sexually assault the air stewards, prior to being wrestled into a waiting police van. But the fact is, more and more travellers do, and now the government is puzzling what can be done.

Of course, this puzzling over why British airports are awash with irresponsible drinking could be seen by many as disingenuous. The Airline Authority today called for it to be made illegal to drink alcohol one has purchased oneself on board a plane.

At the same time, we see that approximately 270m passengers passed through UK airports last year spending an estimated £300m on alcohol during this short retail splurge. This is £300m is around a fifth of the UK’s alcohol retail total.

Over the past 20 years the tax man has fared incredibly well out of Britain nailing the UK “spend it cos you’re on your hols” experience which leads every holiday maker, myself included, to feel slightly remiss if they don’t lug a two litre bottle of Stolichnaya onto the flight.

Surely one way to prevent this growing slide into pissed-up airport chaos would be simply to stop honing that one hour walk from security check in to the flight as a shiny, exhilarating shopping extravaganza. Perhaps it is time to call time on those beautifully lit, neatly stocked, expansive rows of vodka, gin and almost anything else you fancy, but now on special offer, with free glasses, free gifts and a lovely looking promo boy or girl offering you a snifter.

Just to remind readers: there is actually no good reason to take alcohol to Europe, the States or “the rest of the world”. They have it in other countries. Maybe not the brand you were looking for, but hey, live a little.

But I doubt these shops will see much curtailing of their freedoms. Nor will there be much scrutiny or finger wagging at the lax airport licensing laws which mean that pubs can serve early. Because what is more quaintly British and revenue-harvesting these days than a 7am Wetherspoons breakfast and a pint?

The fact is that if £300m of booze was shifted per year within the airports, then this is the reason people are so very boozy. And although it may sound like a good idea to attempt to ban 270 million passengers per year from drinking the very vodka the airport sold them I wonder if it is really the travellers who are the crux of this problem?

They turned the first stage of our holiday into an off-license-come-fun-pub then wondered why a percentage of us treated it exactly thus.