Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary may have won unlikely allies during his recent run-in with Elon Musk but on the company’s latest earnings call with analysts, he returned to the persona most know: provocative, unsparing and mercilessly focused on cost and operational control.
The airline reported strong results – no surprise there, given shares have soared almost 50 per cent over the last year – but it was O’Leary’s commentary on Ukraine, airport operations, and commercial opportunities that drew the sharpest attention.
On Ukraine, O’Leary emphasised Ryanair’s unique flexibility. Whilst he doesn’t foresee peace any time soon (“I don’t see any pressure on Putin to do a deal”), he noted that Ryanair is ready to respond quickly.
The airline says it can redeploy flights within four weeks to cities such as Kyiv or Lviv, and has proposed reopening 30-40 routes from across Europe.
Lest attending analysts were thinking that O’Leary had softened to become a benevolent chief executive, he swiftly disabused them of any such notion.
Speaking of Ukraine’s airports, he dismissed their performance over the past four years as “useless”, “sitting on their arses doing nothing for the last four years”.
Ryanair could deliver fares of €19.99 or €24.99 for five million seats, he said, but only on its terms. “Listen, lads, forget full published charges. Those days are over. If you want this rapid growth and rapid reconstruction, we want big discounts off those bullshit published charges.”
Perhaps Wizz Air might agree to pay published charges, said O’Leary, but that’s “why they can’t make any money”.
O’Leary might be disappointed that his provocative comments largely passed under the media radar. That wasn’t the case when he took on Musk, a spat that O’Leary said had generated 1,500 news articles across 59 different countries, “many of whom had never heard of Ryanair before, but certainly have now”.
O’Leary’s bluntness may have gone largely unnoticed this time, but in the Ryanair playbook, every provocation is a press release waiting to happen.