No frills, but lots of thrills

There may be questions about his true intentions for Hangar 6, but the Ryanair boss won’t be diverted from his long-term strategy – to win the airline war, writes Kathy Sheridan

ANYONE WITH an interest in Michael O’Leary’s business plan has only to clock the name of his most successful racehorse: War of Attrition. All the more reason why the Dublin Airport Authority should have anticipated the latest ferocious onslaught roaring up the runway. The sole consensus this week is that there is nothing new about O’Leary’s modus operandi or his objectives.

Mary Coughlan is not the first of his female targets. “It’s déjà vu. I’ve been there – I’ve been that Mary,” said Mary O’Rourke, once lampooned in Ryanair advertisements. Her theory is that O’Leary has difficulty coping with women in powerful positions. Then again, he has condemned Bertie Ahern (and everyone who ever voted for him) as a “feckless ditherer” and worse; routinely sprays the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) with such epithets as “corrupt fools” and “clowns”; and accused the Taoiseach this week of lying.

His attitude towards officialdom of every hue was summed up in a 2006 Guardianarticle, predicting a swift end to his bid for Aer Lingus: "Other victims of his wrath, which have included the European Commission ('morons'), BAA ('overcharging rapists'), British Airways ('expensive bastards'), and travel agents ('f***ers') will probably not be sad to see the wings fall off his audacious attempt to take over Aer Lingus."

The wings did fall off that one. But O’Leary – described as “far on the far end of a Type A personality” by Prof Tom Begley at UCD – doesn’t do self-recrimination. A Ryanair advertisement featuring a cartoon drawing of a nude Brian Cowen on a toilet is surely not far off.

Such personalised campaigns are known to scarify usually bullish senior politicians, and are bound to have a muting effect on them. For O’Leary, the double whammy is that it also gets the brand out there, being talked about.

Like it or not, it’s all part of his genius, just like the latest battle, ostensibly for Hangar 6. A patriotic plan to save 300 good jobs for a crippled economy? Or a brilliant power play to acquire the foundations of his own terminal, while soundly humiliating the DAA, Aer Lingus and Government Ministers, all the while burnishing his man-of-the-people image and keeping the brand out there, being talked about? Amid the clamour, the thing to remember about Michael O’Leary is that his self-declared missions in life are (a) to break up the DAA (formerly Aer Rianta), and (b) to take over Aer Lingus. They are as integral a part of his persona as the jeans, open-necked (designer) shirt, scruffy trainers and takeaway coffee that contribute to his people’s champion schtick.

This war of attrition is set to rumble on in some shape or form until the day he retires. It's part of what he is. This week, in the fallout around the now-celebrated Hangar 6, about which he refuses to engage with the DAA, some commentators tried to pin down the origin of the vendetta with the authority. One suggested it lay in a long-ago incident when Aer Rianta blocked a Ryanair aircraft's departure to force the airline to pay its dues. In her book Ryanair: How a Small Irish Airline Conquered Europe, Siobhan Creaton tells such a story. The blockade was part of Aer Rianta's effort to make Ryanair pay its fuel bill; Cathal Ryan, the late son of the founder and then a Ryanair pilot, is said to have settled the debt with his gold credit card.

IN THE SCHEMEof things, it's hardly a ripple in the flood of vicious spats and battles between the authority and the airline. But it's worth noting that the history begins with the heart-warming story of how the state-owned Aer Rianta gave life-support to the little airline in its early days, writing off more than £1 million in landing charges and other fees, renegotiating deals at Cork and Shannon and providing duty-free products on such generous terms that the authority left itself out of pocket.

“There are many people at Aer Rianta who remember the significant role it played in saving Ryanair during those dark days,” writes Creaton. “Equally, they know that Ryanair will never acknowledge this.” Later, when O’Leary took over as chief executive, “gratitude played no part in Ryanair’s corporate policy,” says an old Aer Rianta hand. “There was no level of support that would ever satisfy Ryanair. What they demanded would have been putting us in legal peril.”

WHILE O'LEARYcarried on the ceaseless PR war about airport charges, the authority was continually on the back foot, forced – like the proverbial husband asked when he'd stopped beating his wife – to deny that the DAA's charges were the most expensive in Europe.

In 1998, O’Leary threatened to withdraw from Dublin airport altogether if Aer Rianta didn’t reduce its charges. The foot-stamping failed to work on that occasion. Richard Branson of Virgin declared he would happily replace Ryanair in Dublin and, amid the battle, Dublin airport was named the third cheapest of 50 European airports in an independent study.

“Basically, Ryanair is getting very cheap deals in airports in Europe which are on the outskirts of cities,” remarked an unusually emboldened Aer Rianta man. “They can’t expect to get in for nothing with an airport attached to a capital city.”

DECEMBER 2005appeared to usher in a new era of detente when O'Leary – who had refused to expand Irish-based flights until there were competing terminals at Dublin airport and vigorously opposed the awarding of the construction of the new terminal to the DAA – announced 18 new routes at a press conference and, dressed as Santa Claus, presented a festively-wrapped barm brack to the authority's shocked spokesman, Vincent Wall, as a token of "humble pie".

"There is no principle that can't be overturned for competitive reasons," declared the jolly plc chief executive, as previously reported in The Irish Times.

Those are words likely to haunt the wary. When he assured various interrogators this week that he had given a written undertaking to the Tánaiste and the IDA that Hangar 6 would only be used for heavy maintenance, folk familiar with the Ryanair MO furrowed their brows. “His MO,” said one, “is to argue that something has changed between the time the written undertaking was given and current circumstances.”

Why the hang-up on Hangar 6? It’s nearly four times the size of the purpose-designed hangar being built for him in Prestwick, so what does he really want it for? Is it co-incidence that Hangar 6 just happens to be a large, modern facility, blessed with excellent road frontage and car park, and amenable at ground level by a walkway (long, yes, but probably no longer than the current marathon) to Pier D? Sure, it’s basically a big cattle-shed, but a terminal building need not be fancy, as everyone who has flown to a Ryanair destination well knows.

It would be a classically brilliant stroke from the master. And in a freebooting, capitalist culture where everything is now about value for money, what could be wrong with it?

“Ask yourself what would it do to the publicly owned asset that is the rest of Dublin airport. It completely undervalues it,” retorts an aviation source. “Are we going to grant a privately owned company free access to a public airfield? All that public money and investment built up in Dublin airport’s infrastructure – and suddenly this guy gets free access to all that and to hell with all the others? People often ask why he hasn’t built his own airport in Mullingar if this is all so irritating for him. He moved to Frankfurt-Hahn and Paris-Beauvais for cost reasons. Here, he won’t even go to Baldonnell.”

Says an old sparring partner of his: “He pushes things as far they can be pushed, gets the deal – then pushes them again. And he will keep pushing well beyond the parameters of a contractual arrangement – and that’s when he goes public or goes to court. Winning or losing isn’t always what he’s about. The campaign itself suits his purpose, keeps him up there in the publicity stakes . . .”

Opponents moan that it’s impossible to land a blow on him, simply because he is so candid about what he calls his own “deformed personality”. When he retires, he told Marian Finucane, he wants to hand the business over to people who will run it “in a more professional manner than I do, people who will say the right thing about the environment and customers and dogs and old people, because I’m not that kind of person . . .”

Retirement could be two to three years away if he is to be believed. Or not. Either way, if you’re Michael O’Leary, Hangar 6 in all its shed-like glory may hold the key to the best retirement present of all.

CV Michael O'Leary

Who is he?Mullingar-born accountant and chief executive of Ryanair, the man who took the frills out of flying.

Why is he in the news?Says he can create 300 jobs at Dublin airport, on condition of being granted Hangar 6, which happens to be on a 20-year lease to Aer Lingus.

Most appealing characteristics: Rich, witty, irreverent, energetic, focused.

Least appealing characteristics: Loud, overbearing, foul-mouthed, pushy.