Well, good evening and welcome to the big interview and our guest this evening is a man who needs little introduction. It's Ryanair Boss Michael O'Leary. Michael, you're very welcome to the studio. Thanks very much for coming out to us here in Ballymount.
Thank you, K. Pleasure to be here.
Airfares, where are they going because of the war in Iran?
I mean, they're probably going up this summer, but how much we don't yet know. The sooner the war ends, the sooner we will remove the uncertainty over fuel prices. But Ryanair, we've hedged 80% of our fuel for the next 12 months to March 2027. We're certainly going to insulate our passengers against egregious fuel price rises, but the 20% we haven't hedged has doubled between March to the month of April. In March, our unhedged fuel, we're paying about $70 a barrel. In April, we're paying about $150 a barrel.
So, this is the jet fuel as opposed to regular oil.
Yeah. And you know, and the longer the war goes on in Iran, if that goes on into May or June, we're probably facing oil prices or jet fuel prices of anything up to $200 a barrel.
So globally then, airfares, are they going to go up what 15, 20%, do you think? I'm not talking about the short haul about Ryanair.
I mean, it is hard to know because, you know, it's not certain. If there's a recession, airfares will come down. If there's higher oil prices, certainly the legacy airlines, the high fares will be trying to put on fuel surcharges. The trend is certainly going to be up towards the remainder of this summer and that's why we would be encouraging people book early and book now because I think fares will rise as we move through the summer.
So have you seen a bounce say from the likes of people who would have wanted to go to Dubai in the past and they're now thinking I'll go to Spain, I'll go to Portugal.
Certainly this Easter, I mean there's been a dramatic switch. I think lots of families who would have been going either to the Middle East or flying over the Middle East to go to Asia have all rebooked and they're going to Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece. They're all certainly staying much closer to home over the Easter school holidays. It's a little bit early yet, people are not yet changing their summer holiday plans. But that's likely to happen if this war continues.
So if you hadn't booked your flight for the summer, would you book it tonight? Would you wait a few weeks? Would you wait till the end of May?
I would book it tonight. And I'd book it as soon as possible because I think the risk is that not only will airfares rise, but even if the war finishes it's going to take the Middle Eastern carriers a long time to get back in the air. Kuwait, Qatar this week have grounded, sent about 20, 30 of their aircraft to a kind of a desert facility where you close up airplanes. So they're not expected to get back in the air very quickly. So there will be constraints on capacity through the remainder of this year and already if you're going to Asia across with Lufthansa, Air France or KLM, they're dramatically increasing prices.
So you famously had the 99 cents flights. What's your cheapest flight right now? Where can you get?
Today, we can get flights on Ryanair from €19.99. So less than 20 quid. You can travel almost anywhere across Europe. Now you won't do that on the Friday of the August bank holiday weekend. But if you're willing to move travel on a Tuesday, Wednesday, I'm going down to Albania this evening. We're opening up a four aircraft base in Tirana tomorrow morning. There's lots of €19 fares and there's an exciting interesting new destination, Albania.
All right. Let's talk about the passenger cap because you have a major preoccupation with the passenger cap and the government says it's going to pass the legislation. It's a priority for them and that it will be passed perhaps by the summer.
I mean, look, we elected the government in November 2024. They have a 20 seat majority. If you have a 20 seat majority, you should be capable of getting legislation passed in a month, two months, three months. They produced a government program in January of 2025, 16 months ago, that said, 'We will scrap the cap as soon as possible.'
But it is a process, Michael. They do things with transparency. I mean, we've literally had tribunals in this country over planning, and we know the passenger cap comes under planning laws, and we've had politicians and ministers involved in corruption in the past. So there has to be a process. There has to be transparency. There has to be pre-legislative scrutiny.
Oh, give me a break. You have a 20 seat majority. If you want to ram through legislation and you really want to deliver change, you ram through legislation. I mean, I would forgive the government if they had passed it by February, March or April of 2025. But we're sitting here in April of 2026. Our prime minister is wandering around Finland today getting his photograph taken. Who's delivering this foreign direct investment for this country?
That's what you have a foreign minister for. I mean, you know, Micheál Martin wastes more time going around to open envelopes and getting his photograph taken but nothing gets done here at home.
When you have a 20 seat majority you have the power, you can deliver whatever change you decide you want to do but the problem with Micheál Martin is it is dither and indecision.
Hang on a second now. In defense of the government, Michael, in defense of the government, in defense of the coalition, because I'm trying to be objective about the whole situation, right? The economy is flying right now. We have record tax receipts. We have record employment, record low unemployment, record exports. They must be doing something right as opposed to being this do nothing government.
They promised they'd scrap the cap as soon as possible. They will do that. But this 16 months later is not as soon as possible. We have record congestion in Dublin. What are they doing about infrastructure? Nothing. We can't build houses quickly enough. What are they doing about it? Nothing. This government gets nothing done despite having a 20 seat majority.
Michael, effectively the cap isn't there anyway at the moment. I mean, there's a stay on it because of the legal process. So, what 35, 36 million passengers?
Thanks to the airlines. 36 million passengers this year and the real risk with this...
Why is this urgency? I mean, it's not there.
The urgency, well, it is likely that the European court is going to overturn the injunction we got. We think probably by the end of this summer. The greater risk is that the Americans are so pissed off at the Irish government inaction. There's a real risk that they're going to stop Aer Lingus landing flights in New York or elsewhere in the US because the American airlines who want to expand in Dublin but can't because of the cap.
Yeah. You said there was a real risk though that Micheál Martin would be disinvited to the White House and there he was with Donald Trump on the day. So you say a lot of things.
I do. I'm sorry. I can't foretell the future. Much more important though was the head of Airlines for America, A4A, who went in front of a Dáil committee last week. He's an ex-Republican ex-governor of New Hampshire and said he had been in the White House the previous weekend. Uppermost on the agenda for the US Secretary of State for Transport is the cap at Dublin airport. They are really looking at this thing. There is a real risk that Aer Lingus flights will get stopped in New York. And I guarantee you if they stop your Aer Lingus flights in New York, Micheál Martin will pass this legislation in about 2 days because now it's a national crisis.
All right. The passenger cap when it appears on social media does Micheál Martin get around to doing something? It's also related to the residents in North Dublin as you know. Would you take your Ryanair hat off you now just for one moment and put yourself in the position of a resident in North Dublin with young children?
Yeah. Putting them to bed at 7, 8, 9 at night.
And the noise of the planes going overhead. You have no sympathy for that. But now Ryanair's side...
Ryanair's side, they don't even hear the planes going overhead.
They don't. Trust me, we've actually done the research unlike these residents who, these NIMBYs, one of whom moved into the area in 2016, the other one who heads the Balbriggan Community Council moved in in 1998. The airport has been there since 1940. They knew the airport was there but the noise at the airport is getting quieter and quieter. We opened up a second runway two, three years ago that has the number of flights that can... let me finish the point. We've done the research on it and we have sent around audiometers.
So have they by the way, they haven't, they have come up with different research to say that the noise levels...
No evidence whatsoever because they can't produce any different evidence. So over St. Margaret's on normal when there's no aircraft overhead, it's about 47 dB. When there's an aircraft overhead, it goes up to 53 dB. By the way, 50 dB is safe. 65 dB is moderate noise. 85 dB is unsafe. We did exactly the same thing over Balbriggan. It goes from 47 dB to about 52 dB.
And when Virgin Media News and the other news organizations go out there to interview them, we have to stop and start the interviews because of the noise of the planes going overhead.
It is. It's true. You know that they're watching now tonight and they're going, 'Isn't it for him in his big detached house in the quiet countryside and he doesn't have to put up with it?'
Excuse me. I work about 12 hours a day beside the airport. I don't have any issue with the noise. When you're putting the beloved children to bed, the windows are closed. The noise levels are way under 50 dB. This is a bunch of NIMBYs. Let me deal with the Balbriggan Community Council is a fictitious organization that's self-appointed lunatics. The local residents in St. Margaret's... let you say that. I can't.
I can say what I want. You can revert back. The St. Margaret's residents, most of them work around the airport. There's 171 of them. And then this other bunch of loonies, which is the flights not children, children's rights not flights. They're trying to get a petition signed and they say the nighttime noise at the airport and they can't even get a petition signed by more than 400 people.
Okay, let's talk about the people. You call them the tree huggers.
The NIMBYs. Well, I'm talking about environmentalists. Now, are you a climate denier? I mean, do you believe the science?
Firstly, I really object to this climate denier kind of attack.
Well, I'm asking. So, you're saying no.
No. Sorry. Do I believe that the climate is changing? Absolutely. But it's been changing for billions of years. Do I believe that the globe is getting warmer? Yes, it clearly is for about the last 20 years.
And fossil fuels like aviation fuel is contributing to that.
Absolutely. And we do need to decarbonize. But the solution to this, which is to tax fossil fuel, just raises more money for governments, which they then squander. That is not the way forward. New technology is the way to reduce and to decarbonize our economy. If you take the greatest contributor to emissions, is road transport. It accounts for 26% of Europe's CO2 emissions. By the early 2030s, most of that will have electrified. Now, where's the electricity coming from? Natural gas or nuclear? Because we don't produce any ourselves. Aviation accounts for 2%. And we don't have any alternative. Picked on the whole time. I mean, what about the poor farmers? You're not being... What about farmers? What about data centers? What about media want to show global warming? It's the contrails of an aircraft taking off. Oh, look at the globe. It's warming up. They never show you the buses going around Dublin because they're moving too slowly. Road transport. And we will dramatically transform road transport in the next 10 years by going, by electrifying it. That is the greatest contribution we can all make. Taxing air travel will do nothing for emissions or double.
It's a progressive tax really, isn't it? Because the wealthy are the people who fly more often.
No, the people who fly on Ryanair is your average Joe. Our average fare is about 45. We live on a rock on the west of Ireland. There isn't an alternative getting on and off the island unless of course you're a Green politician in which case you can wander around taking ferries and bicycles for the next three weeks because you've nothing else to do.
Is there going to be more flights if the passenger cap is lifted by Ryanair? Where to? And will you have them in the middle of the night?
No. I mean, sorry, it's not that it's not allowed. We actually with our deal with our crews, we don't fly between the hours of about 11:30 at night until about I think about 6:00 a.m. in the morning. We don't fly. If you had your way, claimed by these NIMBYs in North County Dublin...
If you had your way, would you have flights in the middle of the night?
No, because I mean there's lots of airports I can fly through the middle. There's actually our flights are so cheap during the day from 6:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. at night. There's no price discount that will encourage people to fly. And we want to get all the maintenance, get the aircraft cleaned, etc. at night.
All right, Michael, stay with us. We're going to talk about some of your headline grabbing ideas after the break. Stay with us.
You're welcome back to the big interview. My guest this evening is Ryanair Boss, Michael O'Leary. Michael, we're going to go through some of the headline grabbing ideas, whether they were publicity stunts or not, down through the years. Charging for the loo. Now, that was a load of nonsense, wasn't it?
But it's one of the great publicity stunts of all time. I mean, still I get asked at press conferences and I'm going down to Albania this evening. They'll be asking me about charging for toilets. Is there any risk we'll charge for toilets?
Yeah. So, you had no intention whatsoever of ever charging for...
The BBC. I was doing an interview with BBC TV in the car park outside our office at Dublin airport and they asked me what's next charging for toilets. I am off on a riff. Of course, yeah, it's a great idea. We'd take out two toilets. We'd add six extra seats. Look, I mean, we're a low-cost airline. I don't have the money. Well, I didn't then have the money for expensive advertising budgets. We still don't. But the amount of, if you can just make up PR and generate PR, Elon Musk did wonderful work for us in the last couple of weeks having a pop at me for being an idiot, which I thought was reasonable, fair comment.
I think he said you were an insufferable chimp. Or was it the other way around?
No, I think he called me an idiot at one stage, insufferable chimp, and that I should be fired.
Well, we'll get back to Elon Musk in a minute. Taking out the last 10 rows and hanging on to sort of...
Yeah. Yeah. That was never going to be a runner.
That would be a runner, but the safety authority would never allow it. I mean, well, funny, I don't quite understand why. We allow people to stand on trains. You allow people to stand on buses. Now, you know...
But you're not belted in. I mean, you're flying up 36,000 ft.
Well, if the train crashes, you're not... Nobody's belted in on a train either. Now, you know, I'm not advocating for it because frankly, it wouldn't add anything else. If we had a standing area at the back of the plane and you guaranteed everybody the fares would be €1, would people stand it up?
Mhm. But I don't think they'll ever be offered the choice.
What about the padded roller coaster seats? You know, these kind of sitting half sitting up half sitting standing.
They're nonsense. I mean, they're nonsense as well, but they're a nonsense. They were invented by I don't know who somebody else jumped on. Oh, they actually, if you look at them, there's no, you can't actually add any capacity there. The advantage of having a standing area only is you could probably put another 20 or 30 people onto the plane. But no, we wouldn't be doing any stand-up seats.
Now, what about fashion advice? Did you tell people to stop wearing jeans on flights there recently on TikTok?
We didn't. I mean, it would ill-behold Ryanair given that I've worn...
I'm pretty sure you did. Something to do with deep vein thrombosis or something.
I think it was some social media nonsense. Da da da. Right. I've been wearing jeans for 50 years. The first person who'd lose out in a ban against jeans would be me. So, and it would ill-behold, given my fashion sensibilities, for us to start getting fussy about what people wear on board our aircraft.
Right. Let's talk about the bags and the sizers and the controversy and paying for it.
So, we covered this story here on Virgin Media News. We sent a reporter out to the airport and she asked Ryanair straight out, do the staff on the ground get paid commission if they catch people with an oversized bag and she was told no. And that turned out to be not correct. So...
That's one way of saying it.
Is that how you characterize it? That's not correct.
Well, the guy when we, our actual director of sales and marketing made a mistake. Did he make a mistake or is it...
Genuinely did look, but actually I had to go and check do we pay commission on bags and it turned out we did so we corrected it.
Of course you do because it's a revenue stream for you.
Actually, look, the revenue streams are tiny. We don't, we are not in, we started charging for checked bags about 15, 20 years ago. We were the first airline to do it and there was outrage. We don't want the money, we just don't want the bags. If we could get rid of all the bags I would happily do it. When we started charging for bags, 80% of our passengers checked in a bag. Today, 20% of passengers check in a bag. That means 80% of people don't come near a check-in desk, don't go near a baggage carousel, they are much lower cost for us to carry those passengers. And because we carry so, we've reduced checked-in bags so much, the planes now fly lighter, they burn less fuel, it saves us a huge amount of money.
So what are you charging then if you can't get your bag into the sizer? Is it 75, 80 quid, something like that?
If it doesn't fit in the sizer, 75 quid. And what does this, what, how much does the staff get? I think about four or five of it.
And is there a cap on that?
No. And I would have no reason to put a cap on it, but as a result...
They're incentivized to catch you out.
But they're not catching you out. They're incentivized to identify that you're breaking your agreement with the airline. We ask you, show up with a bag that is 60x40 by 20 cm. The bag sizes on Ryanair are bigger than the minimum sizes. So don't be telling me afterwards, oh, it was just the wheels were sticking out or that if it sticks out, it's too big. You're getting charged.
All right, let's talk about drinking. You asked Dublin airport to stop people drinking from more, or our airport from two drinks. The two drink limit.
So, it would really suit Ryanair if someone who's had two drinks and is in great form off on their holidays gets onto the Ryanair flight and says, 'Sure, I'll have another few in here. I don't mind paying a tenner for a gin and tonic.'
Of course, they wouldn't pay a tenner for a gin and tonic.
What would they be paying?
Oh, I don't know, what, five quid or something. I don't know what it is. I don't do gin and tonics. I'm a beer man myself.
Look, the issue for us and all airlines, and it's not just Ryanair, is the rapid rise in disruptive behavior by passengers on board aircraft. Certainly over the last decade...
I mean, in numerical terms, it's quite small. We operate what about three and a half thousand flights a day, but we're probably averaging one flight a day that has to divert because some disruptive passenger is creating a danger to aircraft safety. They're either drunk or they're on drugs or there's a combination of the two. You know, in the old days when they might have been drunk, they'd get on board and they'd fall asleep. I think what happens today is you tend to have much more a mix of alcohol and drugs and then they get aggressive or misbehavior. And it's not just male, it's females as well.
And all the particular routes?
I mean generally the holiday destinations are the worst. I mean the Algarve and Ibiza which tend to have younger people is by far and way the worst. We don't even serve alcohol on flights to Ibiza. We go through people's bags at airports. We thought we were very clever when we used to ban duty-free and then we'd let them on with bottles of water. Of course, then it took us a year to work out the bottles of water were full of vodka. Now we don't even let you on board with a bottle and it is a safety measure. We cannot have our cabin crew being assaulted or abused. We're not willing to tolerate that. And all we've said to, I don't understand at airports why airports are not subject to the same licensing law as everywhere else. Why are we serving pints in airports at 7:00 in the morning? Who needs to be drinking pints at 7:00 in the morning?
But you're happy to have them drinking on your flights.
If you ask me and said we'd have the same rules on board aircraft, no alcohol before 12:00, no problem. Like we're serving very little alcohol at 7 o'clock in the morning. Most people are buying teas and coffees. All we want and the real issue for us is during the summer particularly at weekends when you have ATC delays people are stuck in the bars and they're drinking more and more and more pints and why don't you just stop the boarding because actually unless they completely fall down we can't identify the ones who are drunk and you have that mix of too much alcohol and we think it's the reason we don't allow you to buy more than two bottles of duty-free why do we allow you to buy more than two pints at an airport bar and if you said to us don't sell them more than two drinks on board, we'd happily do that. No problem.
Michael, let's talk about customer service. How would you characterize your own customer service? What's...
You don't believe that, do you?
Absolutely do. We are the most on time airline with the lowest fares. You look at our...
And you know there's been phone-in shows and everyone complaining about customer service and you saying they were refunded when they weren't refunded and all.
You're right. 100% time. No, but if you look at our growth, I mean, we have grown in the last, pre-COVID we had 149 million passengers. This year that will rise to 260 million passengers. The evidence is there on a daily basis. People cannot get enough of the customer service we provide. They're queuing up to get it. They're beating each other over the head to get on board.
The experience on board a Ryanair flight is, is it all about get people to buy as much as they can, unsettle them. The colors, the noise, the here's the lottery tickets, here's that... like are you supposed to be on edge on a Ryanair flight the whole time?
I, and I say this as one of Ryanair's most frequent flyers. It is a great experience. You can buy what you want. You're not pressed into buying anything. I've never bought a lottery ticket on board. I don't understand why anybody buys lottery tickets, but yet they do. It's a great experience. And we get you there. What people want, they want, what's the lowest fare? 99.9% of people booking, what's the lowest fare? And then we are more likely to get you there on time than any other airline.
Did you say before you might get the pilots to create a little bit of turbulence to get people to buy more drink?
I say lots of stupid things at various different stages. Yes, I undoubtedly said that, you know, and yes, we create a bit of turbulence, people don't buy more drinks because a bit of turbulence...
And you did say I think that the ideal customer is someone with a pulse and a credit card. Is that right?
I mean, that's absolutely true. You know, we want, we are operating a very low fare airline. If we can encourage people to buy more stuff on board, great. But we don't force you. You know, you don't have to pay for reserved seats. Half our passengers don't. You don't have to check in a bag. 80% of our passengers don't. But if so if you want to fly from A to B for 19 quid, you can do it on Ryanair with no difficulty and we'll get you there more on time than any other airline.
All right, lots more to talk about. Stay with us. We're going to take another break now and then we'll talk further to Michael O'Leary.
Welcome back to the big interview and my guest this evening is Ryanair Boss Michael O'Leary. This brand you have, this sort of brash, outspoken, tell it like it is, cutting through all the bull. Is it for publicity, for publicity...
Is there no such thing as bad publicity, or is that who you really are? Is it authentic, Michael?
No. Well, firstly, there is. I mean, there's no such thing as bad publicity as long as it's not around safety. You know, we will never go near safety. We never make jokes about safety. But anything else, service, politicians, airports, me, we'll send up anything at all if it generates free publicity, particularly when you have such price advantage that Ryanair has, sales go through the roof. Is it me personally? No. I live a reasonably quiet life. I'm a simple farmer from Mullingar.
A simple billionaire farmer from Mullingar.
But you know, that's the reality of it. I mean, I'm not interested in personal publicity. I get asked to do all these profiles. The answer is no. My family, my wife and children, not interested in it either. They don't want to be in VIP magazine or going to the premiere nights of movies. We live very quietly, very happily in Mullingar. But the rest of it, I will do all the PR I can and the schlock for Ryanair.
But some of your comments about politicians in particular have been very personalized down through the years, particularly around Green Party politicians, Micheál Martin, Simon Harris. They're quite personalized.
