Michael O'Leary (Ryanair)

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Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair.

For other persons named Michael O'Leary, see Michael O'Leary (disambiguation).

Michael O'Leary (born 1961) is chief executive of the low-cost airline Ryanair. He is the eldest of a family of six and was educated at Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare and Trinity College but did not graduate. He worked as a tax consultant with KPMG before becoming financial advisor to Tony Ryan. He was Deputy Chief Executive of Ryanair between 1991 and 1994.

In January 1994 he was promoted to chief executive of Ryanair and operates a Tesco strategy: 'pile it high and sell it cheap.' Under O'Leary's management, what had been an ailing regional carrier bordering on bankruptcy has been transformed into one of the world's most profitable airlines by further developing the low-cost model originated by Southwest Airlines^[1]

O'Leary has a somewhat fiery reputation among both his peers in the airline industry and with his employees. His no-nonsense management style, and his deliberate targeting and scathing criticisms of competitors, airport authorities, governments, unions, and groups of staff have now become a hallmark.

In 2004 he purchased a hackney plate for his Mercedes-Benz to enable it to be classified as a taxi so that he could legally make use of Dublin's bus lanes to speed his car journeys around the city.

The deregulation of Ireland's major airports (beginning with the dissolution of Aer Rianta, Ireland's principal airport authority, which finally occurred in 2004), and the shake-up of traditional full-service airlines are among his most well known high profile demands. O'Leary announced in late 2005 that he intends to stand down from the Ryanair helm in 2008.

He is one of Ireland's richest people, with an estimated fortune of €466 million.^{[citation needed]} Ryanair started in 1985 with 51 people and two aircraft. It carried 5,000 passengers between Britain and Ireland. It is now Europe's most profitable carrier, with 2,600 staff, over 100 aircraft, and 233 routes throughout Europe.

1 O'Leary Expressions
- 1.1 ...About stakeholders, rivals and customers
- 1.2 ...About British airports' security, post August 10 2006
2 Personal life
3 References
4 External links

[edit] O'Leary Expressions

O'Leary makes colourful and extravagant use of the English language:

[edit] ...About stakeholders, rivals and customers

"For years flying has been the preserve of rich fuckers. Now everyone can afford to fly."^[2]

"Screw the travel agents. Take the fuckers out and shoot them. What have they done for passengers over the years?"^[2]

On refunds "we don't fall over ourselves if they say my granny fell ill. What part of no-refund do you not understand? You are not getting a refund so fuck off."^[2]

On Lufthansa: "Jurgen (Weber Chairman Lufthansa Supervisory Board) says Germans don't like low fares. How the fuck does he know? The Germans will crawl bollock-naked over broken glass to get them."^[2]

On rivalry with British Airways: "There's too much 'we really admire our competitors'. All bollocks. Everyone wants to kick the shit out of everyone else. We want to beat the crap out of BA. They mean to kick the crap out of us."^[2]

On the Polish market: "Who wants to go to Gdańsk? There ain't a lot there after you've seen the shipyard wall."^[3]

Being happy: "They don't call us the fighting Irish for nothing. We have always been the travel innovators of Europe. We've built the roads and laid the railways. Now it's the airlines!"^[2]

On environmentalists "I’m always actually very pleasant, but don’t believe in trotting out all that PC claptrap just not to upset a couple of fucking environmental lunatics. They are just loons."^[4]

His ultimate goal: "Free tickets. In a decade or so, airlines will pay travellers to distribute people around Europe. The airline industry is like Tesco, Ikea, or network television where viewers watch for nothing and advertisers pay for access to them. Web companies earn money when they deliver click traffic to other sites."^[2]

On the slightly wider Airbus A320 fuselage: "I've heard a lot of horseshit about a wider fuselage. I've yet in 15 years in this industry to meet one passenger who booked his ticket based on that. The seats have been wide enough and the aisles have been wide enough for passengers."^[5]

[edit] ...About British airports' security, post August 10 2006

Following aircraft bomb plot: "we're still dealing with farcical Keystone Kops-like security measures which add nothing whatsoever to security; are completely ineffectual in terms of improving or adding to security, and are just serving to block up the airports."^[6]

More specifically: "let's deal with a couple of the stupid regulations we are dealing with at the moment [..] it means we are now body searching terrorist suspects like 5 and 6 year children travelling with their parents on holidays to Spain; we're targeting terrorist prospects like elderly passengers and people in wheelchairs who are clearly potentially a great threat to the Great British public and British air safety - this is a nonsense."^[6]

"It feels like Laurel and bloody Hardy are working at the Department of Transport coming up with these security measures."^[7]

"The terrorists must be rolling around the caves of Pakistan laughing."^[8]

[edit] Personal life

O'Leary lives in Gigginstown House near Mullingar. He married Anita Farrell in 2003 and their first child, Matthew, was born in September 2005. He breeds horses at his Gigginstown Stud in County Westmeath and in 2006, his horse War of Attrition trained by Michael 'Mouse' Morris at Fethard, County Tipperary, and ridden by Conor O'Dwyer won the Cheltenham Gold Cup which is the blue riband of steeplechasing.