A few columns ago I said that I hoped British airports wouldn't ban 24-hour drinking; after all, how else are we cattle-class passengers expected to get through the hell of the airport experience.

I'm having second thoughts now, though, having this week witnessed boozed-up Brits at their most inglorious. After two weeks on holiday in the Dominican Republic, my husband and I arrived at the airport for our flight home on Sunday afternoon; and while it goes without saying that the vast majority of passengers were behaving with due decorum and sense, two on our flight most certainly were not. A pair of Liverpudlian men were so steamingly, staggeringly drunk that it took four security guards, two members of the plane's cabin crew, plus a handy-looking alsatian, to deal with the increasing fracas, as the men lurched (in every sense) from "I love yer, yer me best mate!!" exuberance, to full-blown, foul-mouthed aggression.

The situation was of course not helped by a fellow British passenger deciding to wade in to the melee to berate the drunks and generally serve no purpose other than inflaming an already febrile situation.

By the time it was sinking into the drunks' sozzled brains that they weren't heading back to Blighty that evening - for all I know they are still there - their luggage was off the plane; and, to our - and our fellow passengers' - relief and indeed admiration, the flight took off on time, minus the two miscreants.

While this incident was all very harmless - indeed, watching the drunken antics relieved the terminal boredom of being in an airport - it struck me how unfunny it would have been had those passengers been allowed to board the plane. Nothing amusing about someone getting loud and aggressive at 42,000 feet, I am sure.

As is so very often the case, it is the small minority who spoil things for the rest of us. But for the idiotic behaviour of the "shoe bomber" some years ago, millions of us would have been spared the annoyance of having to remove our footwear every time we go through airport security.

And it's the same with alcohol. The vast majority of British travellers are perfectly capable of coping with a couple of glasses at the airport before setting off. Indeed, for nervous travellers, it's pretty much essential. But I can quite understand why there are calls to limit the availability of alcohol in airports - as it only take the drunken actions of people like the two we saw to cause real chaos, unpleasantness and disruption to hundreds of other people.

Luckily, our two topers never made it on to the flight. But I feel sorry for those who have to suffer drunken fellow passengers in the air. A recent report of three foul-mouthed young women being ejected from a flight to Ibiza is sadly no longer shocking. As more and more people travel, it is inevitable that there will be more people getting too tanked up at airports. No doubt the sensible majority will once again suffer because of the actions of the idiotic few.