Ryanair - is the carrier losing the Low-cost Plot?

High-powered managers out-number new flights in jamboree jaunt through CEE Europe.

What, no contorted faces? The Ryanair all-smiles team in Budapest on March 11th. (Company pic)

Once upon a time there was an airline called Malév – the Hungarian national flag carrier. Despite their love of things national, for some unexplained reason, the Orbán government let it go bust in February, 2012 (but that's another story).

When it did, within a day or two, the budget airlines came a'swooping, hoping to pick up the Malév pieces. And heading the pack was Ryanair, its spokesman for the day being non other than that world-famous reclusive-introvert, CEO Michael O'Leary.

Talk about low-cost, the press conference was held in an obscure annex of a back room in a downtown Budapest hotel, from memory, at 11.00 am. Coffee n cake for the hacks on Michael? Forget that!

The former accountant handed out the press releases himself, announcing that as he couldn't afford a professional translator, the text of the Hungarian version was via google translate. Hence might be less than perfect. (He wasn't joking, judging by some remarks from Hungarian colleagues present.)

A quick spiel about how the Dublin-based fapados ('wooden bench') airline would rescue Hungarians stranded by the Malév mess by launching (from memory) 13 new routes from Budapest. This was followed by a few funny face snaps - and he was gone, probably hoping to get a discount on the rent for vacating the room well within the hour mark.

Contrast this with the scene in Budapest on March 11, when it took three high-powered (and surely highly-paid) Ryanair managers, plus an assistant, plus regional communications officer Alicja Wojcik, to reveal news of just four new destinations from the Hungarian capital this summer.

Yes, just four routes! That's less than one new route per employee present.

Alan Coates, Ryanair's IT chief, didn't even say an official word at the presser. (That's him on the far right in the piccie. Nice chap though. )

And the entire party didn't just take in Budapest, no way! The jolly jaunt continued to Sofia, Bulgaria and Tirana, Albania. There, clearly concerned about the danger of sore throats thwarting clear communications, the work load was eased: the squad announced just two new routes at each of these two national capitals.

This rapidly falling productivity metric NR/RMP (New Route per Ryanair Manager Present) prompted a incisive question from one hack*:

Compared to the mean, lean days of the 2012 Michael O'Leary press conference, has Ryanair abandonned its tight cost-control philosophy? After all, aren't the costs of such tours passed on to customers? Or in reduced dividends? Shouldn't shareholders be concerned?

Not at all, Jason McGuinness, Ryanair's Chief Commercial Officer, snapped back.

“We're the leanest operation with the lowest costs across Europe. I think what Michael has been doing over the last couple of years is we want to have more people, that you're talking to more people, be it investors or media. … These are the guys delivering the deals, they're going to deliver the growth over the next number of years, and I think that's what we're trying to promote, that there are a lot of people in Ryanair doing a lot of good work, bringing jobs and aircraft to routes in new Europe.”

No fat cats then?

“Unfortunately not, but thank you. I think there's a compliment in there somewhere, but I'm struggling to find it,” Mr McGuinness admitted.

Don't get me wrong. This crew perhaps deserved an early spring break, for all I know they have been slaving away, cooped up in their black-hole-like Dublin offices since new year.

Michael O'Leary, in town last year. Invariably soft-spoken and subdued, the shy CEO announced just six new routes for Budapest last year. He also admitted he'd flown in from Vienna as the sole passenger on a Ryanair aircraft.

Asked if this [miserably poor] load factor would not harm the carrier's statistics, he said it was accounted to one of his subsidiary airlines.

In this case, were his statistics not bulls**t? To which he replied: "All statistics are bulls**t, don't you know that?"

On the plus side, it must be admitted that they could all converse in passable English. (Michael O'Leary's explanation last year for why you and I can't understand the garbled gobbledygook from Ryanair cabin crew when preparing for take off was that for the Irish, English is a second language, and hence diction can be poor.)

And, unlike in 2012, there was coffee, tea and biscuits for hacks lacking nutrients, so perhaps we shouldn't complain.

For reporting on the new routes, along with a new-found love-in with the Hungarian government, plus not a few harsh words for Vinci, the French airport operator (whom Mr O'Leary eloquently described last year as “a bunch of French monopoly monopolists”), see:

https://bbj.hu/business/industry/transport/ryanair-expands-flights-tempts-govt-with-promise-of-80-capacity-increase/

* Full transparency: the hack was yours truly.

** A regular reader wrote in to complain that I'd been unfair to Ryanair's Irish cabin crew in this post. I like the accent, he said.

Well, I agree. A clear Irish voice, like a Highland lilt, is very attractive to my own ears.

But it was Michael O'Leary who turned the question this way. (In fact, my most recent experience with Ryanair unintelligibilty had been with - I think - Polish crews.)

But nationality is beside the point. I was asking a serious question, because on my previous four flights, which all happened to be on Ryanair, the supposed safety announcements were both garbled and low volume, and hence drowned out by the general engine-cabin noise.

And I seriously asked if cabin crew were given training to speak slowly and clearly, because if these announcements are safety critical, good diction is a necessity.

Now I can't deny that press conferences with O'Leary are fun – there's always a good quote or six to brighten up a story. But it was the Ryanair CEO who turned brought the Irish dimension into the mix and turned this question into a joke, Even after I pressed him on the point, he would not give a clear answer. 

So no, I was not mocking the Irish or any other accent in this incident, just hoping to get a clear answer.