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• Night of the long knives for quangos

  November 17, 2011 @ 10:52 am | by John Collins

  The big story today will be the publication at noon of the Public Service Reform document at an event in Government Buildings with Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin and Minister of State with special responsibility for Public Service Reform and the OPW, Brian Hayes.

  Doesn’t sound that exciting when you put it like that, but what in fact you can expect is an end to decentralisation, the merger or closure of several quangos and state agencies, and the loss of several thousand public sector jobs. Ciaran Hancock revealed this morning that the Irish Aviation Authority and the Commission for Aviation Regulation are likely to be merged. Merging the regulator into the body it regulates is an interesting challenge and gives you some sense of the difficult choices on the table. Here’s a full preview of what we expect.

  Elsewhere this morning the European boss of the IMF has quit, citing personal reasons, media group UTV has seen 2 per cent revenue growth in the first 10 months of the year, and make sure your sitting down for this one, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary and BA boss Willie Walsh have come together to ask the British government to axe air passenger duty.

  In the newspaper today Simon Carswell got hold of David Drumm’s defence documents in his US bankruptcy case. Drumm is claiming that the Anglo Irish Bank board and Financial Regulator knew all about Sean Fitzpatrrick’s warehousing of his directors loans as well as the Maple 10 loans to customers to buy shares, both of which are the subject of investigations.

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• One-to-one: Brian Whelan of Airtaxrefund.com

  December 17, 2010 @ 8:30 am | by Laura Slattery

  Ciarán Hancock talks to Brian Whelan, founder of Airtaxrefund.com, a company that helps air passengers get refunds on their taxes and charges if they buy an airline ticket but don’t actually fly.

   Standard Podcast [10:08m]: Download
  

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• Michael O’Leary must be thrilled by Panorama’s paean to Ryanair

  October 14, 2009 @ 1:22 pm | by Laura Slattery

  “Infamy, infamy – Panorama has it infamy!” is the catchline on the eagerly issued rant from the Ryanair press office. Except it isn’t a rant at all, of course, but another work of comic genius. Point number 11 on its counter-claims to Panorama’s Monday night show on BBC1 goes like this: “Panorama claimed that ‘O’Leary is a bully’ – this is clearly false when the whole world knows that O’Leary is a kind and gentle, caring and thoughtful, sensitive and saintly human being widely beloved by all Ryanair’s 6,5000 people and” – you guessed it – “its 66 million passengers.”

  Yesterday, O’Leary went on Newstalk’s breakfast show to, ostensibly, unleash the full flow of his no-frills indignation on the BBC, but like the press releases and the claims that Panorama did a “hatchet job” on the airline, this is nonsense. Anyone who watched the show, titled Why do people hate Ryanair?, will know that it was probably the most favourable bit of coverage the airline has ever had from a broadcaster like the BBC, for whom being seen to be balanced is paramount. At the end, viewers would have been left mystified as to why exactly people do love to hate Ryanair, not convinced that it’s a hateful company.

  Time was when Ryanair passengers who came a cropper showed up on television it was to complain that Ryanair’s complaints policy largely seemed to involve sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming “no refunds” on a loop. But Panorama featured a family who actually managed to get a refund for a Ryanair screw-up at Stansted airport, we were told. Wow – this global recession must have turned O’Leary soft. Even the design of the website has been changed to make it easier to avoid accidentally buying travel insurance, Panorama said, which must surely be disappointing news to knowing flight bookers who take pleasure in outfoxing the website’s quirks.

  The programme also generously featured two young pro-Ryanair travellers, one of whom had a penchant for drop-of-your-hat trips from the UK to Dublin for 2p – and even had his own handling fee-free Visa Electron card – and another who related how he had flown to Stockholm, Brussels and a plethora of other European cities that he never would have been able to afford to see were it not for Ryanair. Even Ryanair’s love of flying to secondary airports was treated with the humour that this old news deserves.

  Panorama’s problem, journalistically, was that ”Ryanair has revolutionised travel for the masses” has been slightly less done to death than “Ryanair sucks”, so their “agenda” clearly leaned towards the former. The real scoop was that O’Leary dropped his deadpan act for a fleeting moment. The show ended with reporter Vivian White and the Ryanair boss both collapsing into laughter during an on-camera standoff: O’Leary was still chuckling as he walked away. It was all excellent free publicity.

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• Another crazy Ryanair extra charge

  June 8, 2009 @ 1:17 pm | by John Collins

  Ryanair are masters of the additional charge – how else do you think they can fly you for 1cent plus taxes? Additional fees are central to why they have been so profitable while the rest of the airline industry has been disappearing down a tube, although Michael O’Leary may be hedging his bets on whether that will continue to be the case.

  The latest wheeze is a €1 charge to send a text message to your mobile phone with your confirmation number the day before you fly. The press release carries a quote from Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara (nothing as arcance as job titles in the Ryanair world):

  “This will make travelling with Ryanair even easier as passengers will no longer have to print out their confirmation email, but simply refer to their mobile phone for their flight details.”

  The charge will also make millions for Ryanair, given that €1 a text bears absolutely no relation to the economic cost of providing the service.  The wholesale cost of sending a text is a few cent and given Ryanair’s ability to wring the best value out of its suppliers you can bet they are paying one of the best rates around.

  Personally, on the rare occassions when I fly Ryanair, I’ll use Vodafone’s web-based service to send me a delayed text (you can set it to send a text at any time in the coming week) with my confirmation number. Cost to me? 0 cent.

  Oh and thanks to the New York Times for spotting this old ad for Alaska Airways. Don’t get me started on Mr O’Leary’s proposals for toilet charges on his captive passengers.

  

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• Come fly with…

  April 6, 2009 @ 3:06 pm | by Laura Slattery

  Paddy Power has opened the book on who will replace Dermot Mannion as chief executive of Aer Lingus, now that the former Emirates executive has pressed the ejector seat button. Somewhat inevitably, Michael “spend a pound to spend a penny” O’Leary pops up as a 100-1 shot. (The odds for O’Leary’s recommendation for the job, ICTU head David Begg, are sadly not quoted.) But what does it actually take to be an airline boss?

  1. Good gambling skills: Running an airline is a high risk business, with ample opportunities for burning huge piles of cash, as Aer Lingus is currently all too aware. In these days of volatile oil prices, knowing how much of your fuel requirements to hedge, and at what price, is crucial. Locking in at $100 a barrel only to see oil prices immediately dip below $50 is going to make you look stupid, but not as stupid as you will look if you snap up a couple of Boeings at the top of the market, only for aircraft prices to plummet and your previously reliable seat sale enthusiasts to en masse discover the joys of trains, ferries, staycations and teleconferencing.

  2. Chutzpah: If Michael O’Leary’s repetitive spiels and crazy stunts didn’t bring in business, he’d have shut up years ago. No matter what question the man is asked, the answer will include the phrase “lowest fares”, plus one or, at a stretch, two other ideas that he wants to get across. Never mind that he’s obliged to spend the rest of the time defending Ryanair’s “discretionary” charges to horrified media folk: every one who hears him speak is reminded ad nauseum that if you are willing to book online, travel light and engage in the frenzied “oh no, not the middle seat” boarding procedure, Ryanair will be the cheapest flight. Shunning the spotlight and sending your flunkies out before the cameras, as Willie Walsh initially tried to do during the British Airways’ T5 baggage fiasco, isn’t going to work for too long.

  3. An Irish passport: Irish men head up three of the largest airlines in the world: Walsh at BA, O’Leary at Ryanair and Dubliner Alan Joyce at Qantas, where he is in the process of cutting 1,500 jobs in a bid to reduce costs. Joyce, incidentally, is a 40-1 shot for the Aer Lingus job, which he is unlikely to want: like all airlines, Qantas may have its troubles, especially after a proposed merger with BA became unstuck, but, unlike Aer Lingus it is still profitable, while its network of long-haul routes and code share alliances means it’s too big to be dismissed as a “small regional airline” by O’Leary. According to the Paddy Power list, the next CEO of our national flag carrier will be as Irish as the shamrocks on its airplane tails.

  Mannion concedes that what the new Aer Lingus boss really needs is “fresh thinking and new ideas”. Shareholders clearly agree, as the airline’s share price bounced 8 per cent this morning. With what O’Leary called a “good, bloody, deep recession” still gripping the aviation industry, and every move the airline takes subject to intense Government and public scrutiny, one wonders what Paddy Power favourites Niall Walsh (current deputy CEO) and Seán Coyle (current finance director) will come up with on their application forms.

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• What would airline mergers mean for the kangaroo route?

  December 3, 2008 @ 9:42 am | by Laura Slattery

  News that British Airways is mooting a merger with Qantas just one day after Ryanair made an offer for Aer Lingus naturally gives rise to all kinds of pertinent thoughts about the end of the national airline model, as well as lending uncomfortable weight to the idea that Michael O’Leary is right that the shamrocks brigade can no longer fly solo.

  But if you’ve got family members living on the other side of the world, there is only really one (purely selfish) question that matters: so what would a BA-Qantas tie-up mean for my journey from Ireland to Australia? (more…)

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