“IF I could get rid of everyone’s bags I’d have a much better airline.”
These are the words of Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s Chief Executive who spilled them out in a conversation with the Financial Times (FT).
The budget airline boss opened up about how his ideal airline would operate – but it might trigger nightmares for Ryanair’s customer base.
On O’Leary’s perfect plane, people would bring no baggage on board, there would be toilet charges, and everything would be based on efficiency.
Introducing luggage fees has helped O’Leary move towards his dream of a bagless airline with the costs cutting the number of passengers who checked bags from 80% to 20%, according to the FT.
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The fewer bags, the quicker the plane can be unloaded and, accordingly, the faster the airline can ‘turn’ their planes, which are all currently Boeing 737s, over at airports.
By using the same model of aircraft for all flights, the company ensures that all crew and pilots can work on any journey.
Automated bag drop kiosks also help to improve efficiency particularly because people cannot argue with them, says O’Leary.
“You can’t tell a kiosk your bag was lighter when you weighed it in the kitchen this morning – you just have to pay,” he declares.
It was also the goal of efficiency improvement that led to Ryanair’s controversial 2009 suggestion that it could charge passengers to use the toilet – O’Leary believed that this scheme, which was disallowed by regulations, would encourage passengers to visit the bathroom before flying.
As well as helping with efficiency, the toilet charge plan would have also reduced the airline’s fuel bill through lightening the plane – something which reducing bag numbers does too.
Reducing fuel consumption is evidently a priority for O’Leary who says that he is ‘obsessed with decarbonisation’ because it leads to reduced costs.
But he wants to reduce the airline’s environmental impact because ‘of the accountant’ in him, not because he is ‘some sandal-wearing environmentalist’.
It is the aircraft’s efficiency and quick turnaround that keeps Ryanair operating within Europe and the top of north Africa: long haul flights do not allow planes to be used as frequently each day but O’Leary is ‘quite happy to be limited’ to flights of five hours and below.
Even with keeping its planes on short haul routes, Ryanair predicts it will have 800 aircrafts by 2035 that will carry 400 million annual passengers by 2040.
Before then, by 2030, the airline hopes to extract €12 to €14 net profit per passenger, an increase from the current €11 average.
At the moment it is O’Leary who manages aircraft negotiations, cash generation and balance sheet discipline but he has told the FT that he would stand down in ‘five to ten years’.
For his successor, the challenge will be maintaining the ‘maniacal focus on costs’, something which O’Leary does in part by enforcing strict rules on his customers.
“If you don’t comply with our rules, we hate you and will torture you. But if you comply with our rules, we love you,” the businessman says.
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Another reason to continue avoiding Ryanair.
My ideal airline is one without this clown in charge!
My ideal airline is one that doesn’t have ‘feul emergency landings’ to save money.
My ideal airline doesn’t tell you that your luggage could render the flight ‘unsafe’… Unless you pay an extra £100, in which case it IS ‘safe’!
My ideal airline isn’t run from a caraven site.