Ryanair PR machine all smiles despite cancellations turbulence

"Nothing to see here – move along folks," was the message from the Ryanair public relations machine this week as it pinned an image of 20 smiling new pilots to the top of its Twitter page.

The new recruits – all men, by the way – were waving their hands in the air or giving the thumbs up sign outside the company’s office in the Airside Business Park in Swords. “The latest pilots to join Ryanair,” beamed the caption.

The photo opportunity followed a period of intense scrutiny of the airline's treatment of its pilots and its ability to halt recent defections to other low-cost carriers, such as Norwegian Air, which is planning more roadshows in coming weeks to hire pilots for a new Dublin base.

Norwegian intends to recruit an initial 40 pilots, and may add to this as it expands next year. The airline is sure to have ruffled the feathers of Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary with claims that it has already poached 140 of his cockpit troops.

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O’Leary was bullish last week that the “mess” surrounding a raft of flight cancellations over the roster debacle would be sorted out, but the solution arrived at by the airline was to cancel another 400,000 bookings to reduce the pressure over the winter months.

The airline is pulling 25 aircraft from its schedule over the winter and will fly 10 fewer aircraft in its fleet from April 2018. The cancellations will “eliminate all risk of further flight cancellations”, Ryanair said.

Despite O’Leary’s apology last week for the PR mishap that left millions of Ryanair customers in fear of cancelled bookings, the airline once again failed to provide a conclusive list of affected flights from the off.

Several stranded travellers contacted The Irish Times, while the company's social media channels were inundated with angry customers. The airline later said the initial list included only those routes that had been cancelled in their entirety.

The UK's Civil Aviation Authority launched "enforcement action" against Ryanair for failing to give customers accurate information, and requested a meeting as part of a process that could lead to legal action if consumer protection laws have been breached.

The fire-fighting at the airline also led to the shelving of a planned bid for troubled Italian flag carrier Alitalia, if the bid was ever a serious one to begin with. Ryanair was one of 10 circling Alitalia, which was declared insolvent earlier this year with debts of €3 billion.

Government looks to Far East for opportunities

Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald might want to sharpen her skills with chopsticks as her current brief in the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation looks to the Far East for new opportunities ahead of Brexit.

Fitzgerald and the State’s enterprise bodies have placed a strong focus on diversifying to Asian markets, and a delegation of Irish representatives travelled to Singapore and Japan this week for a five-day trade mission.

Fitzgerald said Brexit had given “a major shot in the arm” to the Republic’s engagement with Asia, and suggested direct flights from Dublin to Tokyo were “inevitable” as trade increases, helped by the recent European Union-Japan trade pact.

Back home, officials in the Department of Finance are beavering away to mop up what post-Brexit spoils they can.

One of the more lucrative prizes is the London-based European Medicines Agency. Irish officials working in EU institutions were a bit miffed after the Government attempted to elicit their support in the fight for the facility with a circular email to 400 of them.

One official expressed regret at years of apparent neglect by Irish officialdom towards its citizens working for the EU, and she was followed by others who were equally critical of their treatment at the hands of the State.

Separately, the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland claimed the tourism and alcohol industries were “inseparable”, as it called for a “Brexit budget” on Tuesday week and launched a five-point plan of recommendations.

Tracker mortgage scandal figures emerge

The housing crisis has proven to be a beast with many heads for those grappling with it, and new figures this week showed that at least 60 families have lost their homes as a result of the tracker mortgage scandal.

What’s more, if the rate of home losses at Bank of Ireland and KBC is in line with other banks, more than 100 families may have lost their homes on the back of arrears that were exacerbated by banks’ refusals to offer them low-cost rates they were entitled to.

KBC’s attitude to the issue was described as “an affront to Irish customers” by Fianna Fáil finance spokesman Michael McGrath after it declined to give a key Oireachtas committee an estimate of how many of its customers were impacted.

Separately, AIB chief executive Bernard Byrne revealed the bank had overcharged "several hundred" customers by as much as €500 by applying the wrong rates. Byrne also promised "no return" to the days of 100 per cent speculative funding for developers.

Meanwhile, the Real Estate Alliance said the average three-bed semidetached house nationally had risen 3.1 per cent to €221,843 since June. The overall average house price across the country rose 11.2 per cent over the same period.

Daft.ie economist Ronan Lyons said the crisis stemmed from a shortage of apartments rather than houses. He contended the Republic has a surplus of three- to five-person dwellings, but that there is a “huge shortage” of one- and two-bedroom apartments.

Speaking at a Property Industry Ireland conference, Minister for Housing Damien English said the Government expected the construction of 42,000 houses between this year and next. However, he based that figure on ESB housing connection data, which others have argued can overstate the level of new builds.

‘Irish Times’ posts €1m operating profit as circulation slips

As the economic recovery buoys most industries, newspaper sales "have not yet found a floor and continue to fall", Irish Times managing director Liam Kavanagh said this week.

Kavanagh was speaking after the publisher of The Irish Times posted an operating profit of more than €1 million for last year. That compared with an operating loss of €1.1 million in 2015, but circulation has continued to decline.

He also suggested The Irish Times was looking into the possibilities of acquiring the Irish Examiner and Sunday Business Post titles after the latter was put up for sale by its owner, Landmark Media.

In addition, Kavanagh talked about brand advertising and how it has come under significant pressure from the likes of Google and Facebook. Independent News & Media (INM) chief Robert Pitt welcomed a move by Google to work with publishers on the issue.

Separately, INM has opened up a voluntary redundancy scheme for editorial and commercial staff.