All these gender pay reports are meaningless NONSENSE!
HOW many Ryanair passengers have not, at some point, been frustrated to learn the airport they are being flown to is more than an hour away from their intended destination? The answer: at least one.
‘I’ve never!’ says Michael O’Leary with a glint in his eyes. The chief executive acknowledges Ryanair is renowned for utilising ‘secondary’ airports, making it the butt of some ‘good jokes’. But he says times are changing – three quarters of his planes now land at ‘primary’ airports.
During 25 years at the top of the low-cost airline – which now attracts around 150million passengers annually – O’Leary has built up a reputation as the industry’s most outspoken and controversial boss.
Living up to this image, he predicts that a number of his rivals will be bought by their peers, dismisses gender pay gap reporting as ‘meaningless rubbish’. It’s difficult to escape the conclusion he enjoys being seen as aviation’s bad boy.
‘We have misbehaved in the past. We were inclined all the time when a newspaper would raise a genuine issue, we’d go up in a storm of, “Oooh! We’ll threaten to sue you!”
‘Now we say, “look, if we’ve made a
We misbehaved in the past... now we’re trying to grow up a little bit
mistake, we’ll come out with our hands up and say we’re sorry we made a mistake”. But it is what it is.’
This year, despite being the bete noire of consumer groups, O’Leary expects Ryanair to fly 154 million passengers across Europe – up from 142 million in 2018. However, these numbers are not translating into financial strength. Rising fuel prices, disruptions caused, in part, by traffic control strikes and fierce competition have forced Ryanair to downgrade expectations twice recently.
It could be worse for Ryanair, though. Flybmi, and Wow this week, as well as some small European carriers, have collapsed. O’Leary predicts that within five years there will be just five main airlines in Europe: Ryanair, IAG, Germany’s Lufthansa, Air France KLM and easyJet. His forecast holds water, as Wow Air went under this week.
In a series of blunt forecasts that are likely to irk his rivals, O’Leary predicts IAG will buy Norwegian Air and Tap Air Portugal, Air France KLM will acquire Alitalia and Wizz Air will be sucked into Lufthansa.
Who will Ryanair buy? ‘Nobody,’ says O’Leary firmly.
Ryanair last month announced that O’Leary had signed a new five-year contract, keeping him at the airline until at least 2024. As part of a company restructure, he will be chief executive of Ryanair as a group, while new bosses will head up four divisions: the main airline, Ryanair UK, Poland’s Ryanair Sun and Austria’s Laudamotion, which the firm bought last year.
As part of his deal, O’Leary – worth an estimated net worth of around €1 billion – is sitting on a potential €100 million windfall. The deal enables him to buy 10 million shares in the firm at their February price – just over €11 – if Ryanair’s profits double to €2billion or its share price rises to €21 in the next five years.
In the coming weeks, Ryanair will have to file its latest gender pay gap report. Last year’s figures revealed its male employees are paid on average 72% more per hour than female colleagues – an enormous gap. Does Ryanair have a problem? ‘Complete and utter nonsense,’ says O’Leary. ‘The challenge...when you get these nonsensical pay reports – which are meaningless rubbish – is you have a huge proportion of pilots who are male and a disproportionate amount of women are cabin crew.’
He says Ryanair is trying to fix the disparity by recruiting more female pilots and more male cabin crew. He also said this week that he would favour a woman replacing him as chief executive of Ryanair one day.
But who knows when ‘one day’ will come? Not any day soon, it seems.