YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael O’Leary

lines on the record: 55
first: 2022-11-23
most recent: 2022-11-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Always my pleasure to come to Oslo, particularly to meet with Norsch, who are a very small shareholder in Ryanair, but I hope to persuade you to become a much bigger shareholder in Ryanair into the future. Very good.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My advice to young people is one, be optimistic. The future is in your hands and don't listen to the naysayers in every generation you've had somebody in the marketplace going the end of the world as I have never been more optimistic for the future, but you face huge challenges that we didn't have. You deal with social media, ridiculously young ages, you deal with drugs at ridiculously. I saw my first drug when I was in Trinity. I was 21. And, you know, they were the drug addicts in those days were layabouts and wasters. But there's a very bright future out there, but you must work for it. You got to work hard. You are, must work hard. You must be productive. You must challenge yourself, whether it's in sports or it's in your professional life.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think a very good understanding wife who will make up for my personality flows. And then not to spoil them. You know, make them work, make them. I mean, parents, all my children are very active in school and in sports. We don't have a wee machine in the house. The only thing that we've denied them is we do not have a PlayStation. We will not have a Wii in the house. If you want to engage in sport, go outside and run, cycle, play rugby swim. And we will drive you ridiculous distances to do all that. And then try to be balanced. We expect you to work hard in school and we expect you to work hard, but you choose what you want to do. And then you need a bit of luck. You know, all families are dealing with there's drugs in the schools and in every society in Europe.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's a bit optimistic. I think if you're happy half the time, that's a pretty good batting average. I mean, I've been very fortunate. I've been reasonably successful. I have been reasonably rich. I don't have economic worries, but I'm married. I have four children who are teenagers. I worry more about my children now, probably than I worry about the future of Ryanair. But life should be full of challenges. The reason to get up out of bed in the morning is because there's a philosophical challenge, whether it's a business challenge, an economic challenge, or my daughter was in a school play school musical, the Lion King two weeks ago. These things challenges are sent to motivate us. And, you know, I want to lose probably a stone away in the next year. We have to have reasons to get about a bed. I think the worst.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I enjoyed the industry. I enjoy the work. I'm reasonably well paid and I'm a large shareholder in Reiner. I own 4% of the company, so I am wedded to hopefully continuing to see it grow and thrive. And then my children will waste all the wealth that I have created in the next generation, or hopefully they'll go and do something useful with it.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was just one of the great humorist puncturing of religious, biblical and many other Holy cows and long may humour continue to poke fun at holy cows.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Humor, I think, is the way we puncture our own stupidity. I like humor. I'm probably a bit wacky anyway. And it's very important when people get pompous that you puncture that with humor. I like Monty Python, my favorite movie of all time is The Life of Brian, which punctures brilliantly the Bible. It was great, and I know it off by heart because the movie was banned by the Catholic Church in Ireland when I was in college in 1979 to 1983. But you can show the movie if you had an art club and it was all done. So I went through four years in Trinity and almost twice a week we went to see the life of Brian because it was being put on by every different college club to raise money or to get membership where it is. And it is, you look at it now, it is spectacularly prescient the way it poked fun at the Bible and all of that kind of particularly if you're growing up in Ireland in the 70s and 80s in the Catholic Church ran the country. The life of”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of time is he's one of the richest men in Norway, but he's incredibly humble. He has a very simple lifestyle, and he keeps doing 99 years later. People, I mean, I'm 61, so when are you going to retire? He said, why do I want to retire? I want to keep working. It's better to wear away rather than rust away.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think he's good because he's so professional. You know, it's very difficult, I think, for a very talented young footballer at the age of 20 to get lost in booze and girls and all the distractions. And yet he seems to come from a very good family. His father was, you know, and I don't think he was a mid-level, successful Norwegian footballer, but he was mid-level talent. His mother was a kind of, I think, a heped athlete. He's brilliantly. I mean, he's born to play football and score goals, but he seems to manage himself very well. And that's the challenge in professional football today. There's lots of talented young footballers coming through, but if you can avoid the ills of drink and drugs and girl, I don't mean that in a bad way, but to be professional and be dedicated. And I think that's what I admire most about that. He's a 20-year-old. I admire Gardiola because he's very professional, very dedicated, and almost obsessive. And I admire Olaf Thawn up here because he's now 99 years old. And what I admire most about all of that.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have, and we've been the best team in Europe for about the last 10 years, but we couldn't score goals. And now we have bought a very young Norwegian, and he's brilliant.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Leaders I admire currently Pep Guardiola, who manages my beloved Manchester City football team, Olaf Thawn I admire hugely up here in Norway.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think to be brave, to be out there, to take responsibility when we screw up, I go out and take responsibility, but also to be open and recognize that I am repeatedly wrong. Far too many companies, chief executives get caught up in this. I am always right. Everything I say is a pearl of wisdom. I start from the basis I'm always wrong. It's great having 14-age children because they frequently tell me probably on a daily basis how I'm always wrong. But you have to be humble in this business. We make lots of decisions. We try lots of things, but we don't get wedded to it. We move back out of it very quickly. And when we know we do something wrong, we stop and we change it.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think we made a big solid dance over many years, managed to generate GPR. We were talking about taking out seats and standing room only, and we charge you to use the toilet and I still get asked about when do you start and charge you to use the toilets? Absolutely. The answer is never. But some of that sticks and a lot of what we did for GPR sticks. But I think one of the things we did irritate a lot of people too when we had in 2016, 2017, we'd taken it too far. We had free seating and that caused people an awful lot of stress because there were huge queues at the airports because they wanted to get on and make sure they got the front and seats. We've changed all those policies. We set up a customer panel about three years ago that now means four times a year. We had really good feedback from them. We still do things mainly online and on the app that irritates people and we need that direct feedback from our customers.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably never. I mean, I've always been a rogue, but it's unfair because I'm such a rogue. I think a lot of very good people who work with us and deliver brilliant service get kind of caught up in my PR. But I think increasingly we're regarded.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't think they are. I think people are secretly proud to work for Ryanair. The problem for Ryanair is an awful lot of the PR stuff I've done in recent years makes Reiner almost a target of criticism. So people out for meal and restaurant, where do you? I work at the airport. If you say you work for Ryanair, oh, you delayed my flight or you're terrible. O'Leary's a terrible tosser. That's changing, though, this summer. We've been the most reliable airline. We've the only air that hasn't cancelled and the image is changing. And I think people are proud to work for Ryanair.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“10 times more. But German, this myth of German efficiency, you know, isn't all it is made out to be. But we have, we're unionized, we were non-union up until 2017. We have very good relations with our unions. We've worked through COVID very well with them. We've negotiated pay agreements. We've negotiated pay restorations. We have a very open culture. We communicate across people. We have an internal app for our employees, free travel app, news and information app. So we're always trying to be very open and transparent. Some people would say, you know, I mean, we work hard and I expect people to work hard. We pay well, well above industry averages. Cabin crew are paid in Ireland, across Ireland, the UK between 25 and 45,000 euros, which is almost double what hospitality and retail get paid. And that's important.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When Or I'd say 55 layers I know in Lufthansa, for example, Lufthansa, you know, it was a huge organization. We'll carry this year $168 million, but we employ only 17,000 people. Lufthansa will carry this year about 130 million passengers, but they employ about 130,000 people.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it is very open. It's a very, we have a very small management team. I mean, the senior management team in Reiner is only 10 people. The wider management team is only 40 people. We have only three layers of management between me and somebody doing check-in at Dublin. We try to be very open. I grew up in pull boarding gates. I load bags. The rest of the management do too. And we tried to be open and have an open culture.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But at the moment, new technology, the new technology engines are incredible what they're able to do in terms of reducing fuel consumption. I mean, I'm a selfish accountant. I want to reduce fuel consumption because it's my largest cost. But you can have reduced costs and be more energy efficient and sustainable the same way.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bonavestonians, that's what they do. The Poles think nothing of driving 24 hours across the European continent. We need to convert them to flying but flying on greener, cleaner aircraft. And then at much lower airfare so that actually tourism. And the great interesting thing about tourism gets a lot of criticism. But tourism is one of those industries that creates jobs and employment, particularly for entry-level young people in the regions of Europe, in Eastern Europe, in southern Italy, in the Greek islands.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, we are creating traffic, but I mean, tourism in Estonia, tourism in Ireland, tourism in Portugal needs that low cost. What we've got to do, people will still fly. There's no way of turning that clock back. I remember flying in the EU accounts for 2% of EU CO2 emissions, so you can argue actually given that road transport accounts for 27% of Europe's CO2 emissions by converting them to flying to Estonia as opposed to driving to Estonia, we're significantly reducing their carbon footprint.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, we take them off flying Lufthansa or Baltic Air who charge them about 200 euros and they reduce their carbon footprint by 50%.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Willy, mainly because they're all run by pilots, and then pilots want to go off and buy shiny new toys when all is good. And I'm like a farmer. My farming heritage in Ireland, we know we have to get through the winter, so we have to make money in the summer, sell the cattle, sell the crops. We hunker down for the winter. And then we hope always we can buy cheaply in the winter when other farmers are selling crops and cattle, and we treat aircraft the same way. Hunker down and wait for the crisis. The one great thing about the air industry, we know it is capital intensive, cyclical. We are always three or four years away from the next crisis. So as long as you build cash, you don't have to wait long for the next crisis to come along.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We did actually, what we did was we had huge aircraft orders Boeing were in trouble because the MAX had been grounded for two years. We renegotiated the price of the existing aircraft deals. I mean, when we got a very significant discount from Boeing on what we're already very lowly priced aircraft. So what we did is we went back and we renegotiated the order, but we increased the size of the order. So during COVID, we increased our order book from 150 to 210 aircraft, reduced the price. And lo and behold, as we emerge out of COVID now, airports all over Europe are looking for a return, a traffic recovery and growth. And we're the only airline in Europe that's taking delivery of 200 aircraft over the next five, four year and a half year period that can deliver that growth.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We buy our planes when there is a crisis. We generally have a very strong balance sheet today. We have 4.7 billion in cash coming out of COVID because we went into COVID with about 3.5 billion in cash. We placed our first order after 9-11 25 aircraft and it was the making of Ryanair. And ever since then we have also placed orders after the Gulf War, after the financial crash in 2007, 2007, 2009. We placed two huge bets. We ordered over 400 aircraft in two different orders in 2009, I think in 2011”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In our industry, it's absolutely, without doubt, it is doing aircraft deals at opportune timings with Boeing or with Airbus. I mean, all of our aircraft orders have been placed during moments of great crisis.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it forms part of the same thing. I mean, I operate an industry which is chronically loss making, but is gradually moving towards, I think, stability and profitability. But there's been enormous competition. And we, I mean, you look at Ryanair's growth over the last 20 years. We've been competing with state-subsidized, state-owned monopolies who can't touch us.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because it's reason we get up in the morning. I think it's natural the human instinct, my children, you know, your children are four or five. The first thing you want to do is race each other. You put them in a pool, they want to have races against each other”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so the marketplace on long haul is different. On short haul, 25 minute turnarounds gives you two extra flights per day per aircraft. That means that if Norwegian or SAS operates six flights a day, we do eight with the same aircraft and the same cruise. We're already 33% more efficient. Never mind all the other cost savings. And no passenger will pay you a premium for a business class seat on an intra-European flight.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there is a shorthaul in Europe or in North America, business class, premium travel is gone. We've blown it up. No business people want to go and sit in a business lounge at 6.30 in the morning drinking champagne. They want to show up at the airport 25 minutes before departure. Get on the plane and get to their destination. On long haul, 20% of the marketplace will pay a ludicrous premium for business and first-class travel and movies and flight lap beds so that they can go into a business lounge. And they will not move out of JFK.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the only other ones I know are fleur. And, you know, while we wish them well, I'm afraid it's chronically lost making and will never. I mean, it is very difficult to be a Norwegian or a Swedish airline as the results of both SAS Norwegian have demonstrated. Norwegian, if long-haul low cost was ever going to work, Norwegian would have been hugely profitable. But long-haul low-cost doesn't work The longhold market is different for two reasons one, quick turnarounds make no difference. You're still only, if you turn a plane around in 25 minutes or in three hours, you can still only fly two flights a day across the Atlantic.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They claim to be on time as well, but I wouldn't make too much attention to what they claim. Anatalia will get sold to either Lufthansa Air France in the next 12 months. TAP will be sold because you have to repay huge state aid to probably IEG, Iberia BA. And that really only leaves EasyJet and Wiz. EasyJet, I believe, will be sold to, will be bought or acquired or merged with either Air France or BA because they have a very big strategic position at Paris Airports or in Gatwick. And that leaves only Wiz outstanding. Wiz are no longer making money. They've lost huge amounts of money in the last two years. They are pivoting away from competing with Ryanair in Europe by seeking new operations in the Middle East. So they're focusing on growth in Dubai and in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, which is a good sensible strategy because if you can't compete with Ryanair, you better get out of the way.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the next three years, Europe is going to consolidate much like America did 10 years ago into four very large airlines. You will have three large connecting carriers which will be led by Lufthansa, Air France BA and one very large, very low cost, very low Fair Point-to-point carrier Ryanair and we will dominate the industry in Europe. In the next two or three years”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, the pandemic, certainly in European air travel, has totally transformed the marketplace. As we come out of the pandemic, I think you're going to, there has been significant consolidation. Huge airlines like Thomas Cook, Norwegian, for example, has totally restructured, it's emerged out of the COVID pandemic about 30% the size it was going into the pandemic. Flyby has gone bust. Anitalia has reduced its fleet by 60%. TAP in Portugal has cut the fleet by 40%. And into all of those markets, Ryanair expanded this year.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We benefited it, but you had to have a strong balance sheet and loss of cash to be able to make those brave decisions. We also this time last year hired over 1,000 new pilots and two, we were hiring and training 3,000 new cabin crew, even as Omicron, which emerged on the 20th in the last week of last November, crushed Christmas. And then everybody thought the recovery was coming and Putin invades Ukraine and it crushed Easter. We kept going. And so we were the only airline in April, May that had all of our 73 new aircraft, all of our pilots, all of our cabin crew ready to go when this dramatic recovery took place. People have been locked up for two years and they couldn't wait to go back flying. And we have seen this summer, we've operated about 115% of our pre-COVID capacity and captured huge amounts of market share in countries all over Europe.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, we didn't lay off people. One, because we had a very strong balance sheet going into it, and two, because we knew there is going to be a very strong recovery. And the critical thing in a recovery would be to keep your pilots and your cabin crew, not just employed, but current. We have to fly a pilot, each aircraft, each pilot, each camera crew once a month. And some cases during COVID, we were sending a plane up once a month with 150 pilots and camera crew on it so that we could keep all their licenses current.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thinking behind is just another crisis to be managed. I mean, look, COVID has been the most existential crisis faced by the airline industry. I mean, even my thought arrogantly and wrongly that this could never go wrong. We've been through the Icelandic volcanoes, 9-11, the Gulf War. We've never not flown more than 95% of our planned capacity for the next 12 months. We hedge oil 12 months out at 90% because we're always going to use 90% of our oil. And here came COVID and all of a sudden the business, we were grounded for two years.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Torp, I think, is a very good airport. It's owned by one of my business heroes, Olaf Thon, who I think is a genius and brilliant, and I really enjoy meeting him.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Airports seem to think that they have a God-given right to spend ludicrous amounts of money on marble and glass, go to some national regulator or government that allows them some ridiculous return on that ludicrously wasteful expenditure and charge airlines and passengers very high fees in Norway is a good example. It's about 2528 euros per passenger just to get to access the shopping centre. And then the government's levy attacks on top.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think airports are a business model that needs to change. They are gradually weaning themselves off being these expensive marble glass palaces where they sell duty-free at ridiculously discounted prices and believe they should charge people for the right to enter park and enter their facilities. I think airports need to change in the next 10 years and will become much more like shopping malls where in actual fact it should be free to get you through. People should move freely through the shopping mall but spend money at the restaurants and at the and that creates huge opportunities for airports to lower the charges to the airlines and to passengers to move through the facility.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we've stopped. I mean, in other words, it's changed. We've stopped doing that kind of outrageous PR because we're now, we are the biggest airline in Europe. We have a fleet of 600 aircraft. And, you know, safety, we don't want to be that kind of deliberately antagonistic. But the world has changed. What we have done, what has changed now in the last 10 years is we have ludicrous. And I know nothing about it, but we have social media teams on TikTok and Twitter and all that stuff. We are by far, I think, the most one of the biggest corporates on TikTok. And they produce all of this, to my mind, mind-numbingly idiotic 15-second videos, but they're very popular.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, we didn't have money for advertising because we were going broke when I joined it in 1986. And at that stage, I can't be the likes of Richard Branson. So we did ridiculous things all in the interest of generating GPR. We ran ads poking fun at priests, the pope, the queen, Prince Charles.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think what we're most proud of is kind of transforming air travel in Europe, some would say for the worst, I say for the best we've democratized and air travel is now affordable for everybody. When I grew up in Ireland in the 60s and 70s, you couldn't afford to fly to get off the island. Everybody went by ferry. Now everybody in Europe, nobody under the age of 40 in Europe, they all expect to travel across Europe and can do for 40, 50, 60 euros one-way airfares. And in case if you're patient, you can do it for 19 and 20-9 euro airfares with Ryanair. And I think we're most proud of, if you like, that democratizing air travel, removing it from being the privilege of the rich and making it affordable for everybody.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nobody will pay a premium for a short one or two hour flight, and that means it's commoditized. So we have taken the kind of supermarket of the IKEA philosophy and applied it to the airline industry, which means we are by some considerable distance the lowest cost, lowest fare, most on-time airline in Europe.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's the largest area in the States. It dominates the domestic market in the States. They have a fleet of about 750 aircraft that carry about 150 million passengers a year and it has been by some spectacular lengths the most profitable, most successful airline in the US for the last 30 years. And we have copied some of their model, all one aircraft type. We're all Boeing 737, although it can equally succeed with Airbuses, but it has to be, you have to, the patience then to wait until Boeing are desperate for order, so you buy aircraft cheaply. You go to secondary airports when you're building the model. We started here in Oslo and Torp, although we're increasingly, we now, we have three new routes in Gardamoen, and you turn the airplane around quickly, 25 minutes, which means we get two, we save about three hours on six flights every day, which gives us enough time with the same pilots, same aircraft to operate two more flights per day. And the great joy of deregulation and liberalization in the airline industry is on short haul flights around Europe and in North America there is no business class anymore.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Came about because the place was going bankrupt and they couldn't get anybody else to go in and be CFO, so it was losing all the Ryan's money. So I was sent in to stop the losses, do whatever you want to stop the losses. And the Ryans were incorrigible optimists, so they wanted to have Tony Ryan, who was very wealthy at the time, used to fly around on Concord. And he had this vision, which was insane, that you could fly around on Concorde but charge 10 euro airfares. And so he wanted it very stylish and elegant, but cheap. The cheap it was right, but it was never stylish and elegant. I went and studied with him. We went and looked at Herb Keller, who was running Southwest Airlines in the States at the time. And you could realize actually you could be cheap, but it had to be very efficient. It couldn't, wouldn't always be elegant, but you piled it high and sell it cheap and you commoditize certainly short haul air travel. And Ryanair has been doing that in Europe for the last 25 years through four recessions, Gulf Wars, Icelandic volcanoes, and the formula continues to work spectacularly.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because it's one of the few things we're actually genuinely good at. Other than that, we're making it up as we go along. And we have a long history of breeding horses, racing horses. We come and we are a Viking stock. And the Vikings were good at two things. Probably three things, but two things that are legal these days. One was shipping and the other one was horses. They're not allowed to rape and pillage anymore. And I think we inherited that from our Viking ancestors. And it's something we have natural conditions. The farms in Ireland, you know, we don't have a very level land. So you generally breed cattle and horses because we're not big enough or rich enough to do tillage.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they're good kids, but they all have ponies, dogs, we breed horses, we breed cattle, and we have tillage, and they take responsibility. In fact, my eldest is now doing as one of his subjects for his school exams, agricultural science”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we treat them ridiculously well, much better than I was treated when I was a teenager, but they keep pointing out to me that”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's critical. I think you grow up in a farm pretty early you learn the value of hard work. You also learn responsibility. Animals have to be fed at weekends. You can take breaks and go on holidays, but you always have to make arrangements. And I think it's a very nice way of growing up. And I've been fortunate enough to, as I said, expand the size of the farm. So I'm now married with four children, teenagers. And teenagers more than any other organism in the known world need responsibility and farm work more than any other organism I know.”
2022-11-23 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source