Even in an age of astronomical executive pay, few bosses would be indifferent to the idea of gaining another €100m. And even fewer billionaires might regularly be seen lugging their own cardboard props into the cramped lift of a London hotel before a press conference.
But Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, who is in line for a payout that could dwarf anything yet seen in aviation, has long given the strong impression of not being bothered about the megabonus soon heading his way. The airline’s chief executive will receive the payout, agreed in 2019, if the company hits long-term profit targets that are looking increasingly achievable.
This stems partly, of course, from O’Leary being a significant investor in the airline. Given his 3.9% shareholding, the potential €98m (£84m) bonus becomes just a fraction of his spiralling on-paper wealth: a 50% rise in the shares since November already makes his stake in Ryanair several hundred million euros fatter.
It is possibly still not enough for O’Leary. He will concede only that aviation has made him “reasonably wealthy”. A billionaire, no? “Probably,” he says. “The Ryanair share price goes up and down.”
But he also appears determined to keep himself and his family grounded. At least one holiday a year is dedicated to an “educational tour”, and on this year’s agenda was a visit to concentration camps.
“Children of people who are reasonably wealthy and have a very entitled view of the world that comes from social media – they should go and see Auschwitz and realise that bad things happen, he says. “Everyone should be aware and never forget the atrocities. No matter how hard you think your life is – go and see what happened to the Jews in the second world war.”
It can still come as something of a surprise to see O’Leary touch on serious subjects in public, after decades of press conference stunts, unbridled hip-shooting pronouncements and sweary tirades against those he deems incompetent.
This autumn, his favourite targets have been the UK’s air traffic controllers, Nats: he made repeated calls for the head of “overpaid” chief executive Martin Rolfe (salary: £477,000), after the system failure that briefly halted flights in late August. The last O’Leary press conference was an extended, full-blown denunciation of Nats, the Civil Aviation Authority and their boards of directors.
But once the rant is over, O’Leary is affable and entertaining, expressing opinions at pace – and if you don’t like them, he has others you might not like either.
The man who famously joked that the “best thing we can do with environmentalists is shoot them” says he is now concerned by the impacts of climate change. “As one of the larger farmers in Ireland, we’ve had a very bad summer this year, so yes. Look, I am generally a believer that technology and human ingenuity will overcome the concerns about climate change. I think we do have to decarbonise, and I have absolutely no doubt that we will not decarbonise because we tax people more.”
He’s unclear on how else that can happen. Ryanair has huge numbers of new planes on order which are more efficient per passenger, but this will mean ever more airline seats are available.
People will “absolutely not” stop flying because of concerns about climate change, argues O’Leary, who was recently hit with cream pies by climate protesters in Brussels. He adds: “I always feel somewhat aggrieved that the airlines are the poster child for climate change, when airlines account for 2% of CO2 emissions. Shipping accounts for 5%, but nobody ever posts a picture of a boat chugging out of a harbour and goes: ‘There you go: the globe is warming up’.”
But he says sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), the great hope for many airlines, are a con: “They’re a wheeze. Unless governments get in behind the production and sourcing of sustainable aviation fuels – and they’re only going to come from, ultimately, the oil majors, the only ones who are going to make them – I don’t see where we will get the supply in the volumes we need. You want everybody running around collecting fucking cooking oil? There isn’t enough cooking oil in the world to power more than one day’s aviation.”
Ryanair has signed deals with oil majors to supply up to 9.5% of its fuel needs in SAF by 2030. “But we have no idea that they’ll be able to make those kinds of volumes.”
To help aviation, he says, governments should reform his bete noire: air traffic control. “If you could eliminate ATC delays and inefficient routings, you would reduce fuel consumption by another 20-25%.”
For O’Leary, cars should be the priority: “If you can move that to an electric fleet … It’s the only way we’re going to get anywhere close to net zero by 2050.”
Whatever flak people direct at O’Leary’s airline, and his no-prisoners policy on additional fees, few could accuse him of being incompetent. Lowering costs, including charges from airports and suppliers, in order to keep fares low has been the bedrock of Ryanair’s phenomenal growth from Irish also-ran to Europe’s biggest airline.
Yet, he says, he fell into aviation by accident, once he eventually knuckled down after finding freedom at university: “I was at a Jesuit boarding school for six years. So we spent the first two years chasing girls and drinking beer, and then after that I wanted to go off in business and make money.”
Starting off in KPMG as a tax accountant, he first invested in convenience stores, which was “the only way you could make money quickly in Ireland in those days. Because they were cash businesses, you kind of jacked up the turnover and extracted cash, then went and bought property with the surplus.”
A crucial turning point came at KPMG in the 1980s when he advised one Tony Ryan, owner of an aviation leasing business, on his tax affairs and left to start working for him. Back then, the new airline “was bleeding – all the income he was getting out of the leasing company was disappearing down the black hole that was Ryanair”.
O’Leary had been going to shut it down – but then was dispatched to the US to see Herb Kelleher, founder of Dallas-based Southwest Airlines. He returned to implement Southwest’s stripped-back model at Ryanair just as aviation across Europe was deregulating and low-cost travel was opening up. “We got there first. And managed to stay ahead of them all.”
CV
Age 62
Family Married with four teenage children - three boys, one girl.
Education Business, economics and social studies at Trinity College, Dublin.
Pay €1.2m (plus 50% bonus).
Biggest career mistake “Not setting up Facebook from my dorm at Trinity 10 years before Mark Zuckerberg did.”
Best advice he’s been given “Probably from my Jesuit brethren: work hard, try your best and go out and do something useful in your life.”
Phrase he overuses “I’m sorry!”
What he does to relax “Generally driving four teenagers around for their activities – rugby, cross-country running and hockey – and supporting Man City. God bless the petrodollars.”
