We won't be allowed advertise our lowest fares – Michael O'Leary reacts to passenger right proposal

Nothing. The committee of companies agreed a complete load of nonsense on passenger rights. To be fair, the big push from the commission was to extend the delays from three up to four hours, which made some sense, given the ATC delays. But there was no reform on ATC, no reform on ET, no pullback on ETS, which the Europeans are still the only ones paying. And the big win for the passengers: all airlines must now advertise a fare that includes a second carry-on bag. So you now want us to advertise higher fares than the lower fares that are available out there, even though more than 50% of passengers don't bring a cabin bag. And that's going to be the greatest win for our times. Putin has invaded Ukraine and Trump is bombing Iran, all over the right to carry a second cabin bag on board aircraft. And our parliamentarians are absolutely obsessed with the needs of passengers, the right to bring a second bag on board an aircraft, even though they don't all fit.

Nothing. There's really nothing in it.

To be fair to the commission, they didn't, because these lunatics wanted to put in the freedom or the passenger right to bring two cabin bags on board the aircraft, despite the fact they don't fit. So at least the commission sort of defended that. Never mind on our aircraft — anybody who's flown a Ryanair aircraft knows there's no space in the overhead bins for any more bags. But the turboprop aircraft, like the Aer Lingus regional aircraft, you barely fit one carry-on bag. Most of those overheads, particularly where the wings are, don't even have an overhead bin. So it's nonsense, but it's the typical kind of stupidity that you get out of the European Parliament. They wasted nearly five months on this. I think it was the Cypriots who wanted a deal and they couldn't come up with something, and this is the usual European compromise. They come up with these stupid regulations that really are completely nonsensical. We have lower fares — airlines have our lowest fares, and the lowest fares exclude a second carry-on bag. And yet now we're not allowed to advertise those fares. Now we have to advertise a higher fare. When more than half our passengers, the majority of passengers, don't pay those fares. So only Europe can come up with this stupidity. And then we have von der Leyen walking around nattering on about the need for Europe to be more competitive, we must be more competitive, and they do nothing. And this is their solution to Europe being more competitive: let's have the airlines advertise higher fares than are actually available in the system. What do you think customers will do? They'll buy the lower fares that are available in the system.

To be fair, the Europeans already defined the baggage sizes. The baggage definitions are agreed by the European airlines in consultation with the commission. So the free carry-on bag is the large briefcase-sized bag. The second one is the one that fits into the official trolley bag or the wheelie bag. So there's no argument over the sizes of the bag. The problem is that we're an airline where 94% load factor means almost every seat is full and everybody can't bring a trolley bag on board those aircraft. One, you will have more queues at airport security around Europe, and two, you'll have huge delays at boarding gates.

It's not. There's no solution. The only resolution is there's no change to what you can bring on board an aircraft, but the airlines now are not allowed to advertise the price unless that price includes the second trolley bag. So basically our lowest fare will now become the lowest fare including priority boarding. So we're no longer allowed to advertise our lowest fares. But customers will continue to buy the lowest fares because they won't be bringing a second carry-on bag on board.

No. No. No. No. No. No. They're saying now, the European Commission with Parliament in their wisdom on behalf of consumers, are saying airlines can only advertise higher fares than are available in their system, but that higher fare will include the free second carry-on bag.

We won't allow it. We will allow up to 50% of people to buy the priority boarding. The other 50% aren't allowed to buy it. The first thing is about 45% of passengers bought priority boarding. We don't allow any more priority boarding. That's how we limit the second carry-on bag.

No. No. No. No. No. There's no right to — to be fair, there's no right to the 10K bag. There's no change to what passengers can bring on board aircraft. It is still one free personal item bag and then you have to pay extra to bring the second cabin bag. But what the Commission and the Parliament have now agreed is that the airlines can only advertise that for the higher fare, which includes the priority boarding in it.

In reality, it would mean almost nothing. What we currently have is parents who pay a four euro fee per seat. We won't be able to charge the lowest fee, the four euro per seat. But if you want those seats, you'll be sitting in rows 19, 20, 21, and 22. And more than half of parents with children want to sit somewhere else, and they'll sit somewhere else, and they'll continue to pay the reserved seat, but the children will be free.

We don't think so. Again, more nonsense. We're up to 99.9% of people now with a digital boarding pass. You will still have the right to go to the airport and print off a paper boarding pass. And again, we think almost nobody will want the inconvenience of arriving at the airport and going to a check-in desk or a ticket desk to queue to print out the free boarding pass. So we think it'll have no effect whatsoever.

Yeah, I mean, that continues to be the main problem. Our biggest problem with EU261 is still that air traffic control accounts for 90% of our flight delays and yet we're not allowed to recover our costs from air traffic control. The law says you can recover your costs from whoever caused the delay, but all of the national ATC monopolies are immune from prosecution. So the parliament and the commissioner have done nothing about the two real issues facing consumers and compensation, which is ATC delays and this ETS tax on only intra-EU flights. We exempt all the Americans, Russians, the non-Europeans landing and taking off in Europe.

Yeah. Yeah, still — that hasn't changed. We wait to see what happens in the Middle East. If there is a resolution there, which we hope there will be in the next couple of weeks, oil prices have come back significantly this week, but we need kind of passenger recovery or passenger confidence. But for the moment, it continues to be strong closer in and a little bit weaker further out.

Yeah, I would think so. We thought originally fares would be up 3 or 4% this summer. Now we think at best they'll be flat.