OPINION
Simon Calder,
travel editor,
The Independent
Better
the devil
you
know
He is the fi gure that
many in the travel
industry – and plenty
of passengers – love to
hate. Yet Michael
O’Leary is extraordinarily successful.
He joined a failing Irish airline in
1988, quickly rose to become chief
executive, and turned Ryanair into
the world’s leading airline in terms
of international passenger carryings.
How has he done it? Partly
by borrowing ideas
from other airlines,
in particular easyJet.
But mainly by going
against conventional
wisdom.
In the aftermath of
September 11 2001, when
no one else was
ordering aircraft,
O’Leary played
off Airbus
against Boeing
and ended up
ordering more
than 100 737s at
around half the
list price. This
shrewd purchase
has underpinned the
airline’s claim to have
the lowest cost-base in
Europe, with fares to
match. Yet while other carriers
have loyalty programmes, Ryanair’s
hard-line policies have provoked
a kind of disloyalty scheme.
“By proposing that
the traveller should
pay a pound to
spend a penny, some
say O’Leary has
‘done a Ratner’”
Here’s what I mean: I fl y on
Ryanair more frequently than
on any other airline, around 20
times a year. Yet I will do
everything that I can to
dodge the extra costs
that so quickly mount
for anything but the
most basic
commodity of
a seat from A to
B. I procured a
Visa Electron
card to avoid
the ludicrous
£9.50 surcharge
per round-trip for
paying with a
debit card. I
always check in online (saving
another £9.50) and never check in
luggage (the same saving again),
and carry an empty water bottle
through security to fi ll up at the
water fountain rather than pay the
absurd £3 for a small bottle of H2O
on board. And, if and when the £1
charge for using the toilet comes in,
I shall carry out careful bladder
management.
By proposing that the traveller
should pay a pound to spend a
penny, some say O’Leary has ‘done
a Ratner’. The former jewellery
mogul, Gerald Ratner, managed to
destroy his business at the time of
the last recession by saying his
earrings were cheaper than a
Marks and Spencer prawn
sandwich, but would not last so
long, and describing the sherry
decanters he sold as “crap” (which,
I guess, brings us back to toilets).
While Ratner disparaged his
products, and by extension his
customers; Michael O’Leary spends
his time praising his company, and
slagging off rival airlines. Sure,
plenty of us have said “I’ll never
fl y Ryanair again” after a bad
experience, but with a cheap, safe
and on-time product, O’Leary
knows we’ll be back, grumbling
all the way to the departure gate.
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