As critics trash Boeing, the outspoken CEO of Ryanair emerges as an unlikely defender
You’d think that the world’s most voluble, outrageous airline CEO, and a big Boeing customer, might be launching the most lacerating barbs at the troubled manufacturer. But not so. Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, the figure usually likeliest to trash regulators, rivals, politicians, suppliers or anyone else he views as screwing up, is displaying robust support for the troubled manufacturer.
For all of his over-the-top rhetoric, O’Leary merits great credibility as the most successful airline chief in Europe. He’s built Ryanair from a tiny challenger to the flag carriers pioneering the never-before-seen category of budget air travel when he took the joystick in 1994 into the region’s largest player, measured by passengers flown. This year, Ryanair expects to transport 183 million people on 1.3 million flights to 235 destinations. That’s aboard around 600 planes, and 95% of them are Boeing. That roster stands in stark contrast to the Airbus-dominated lineups at his rivals Air France, Lufthansa and British Airways. O’Leary’s now the longest-serving CEO of all the world’s major airlines.
A major reason O’Leary’s such a fan: He’s the prime customer for the 737-8-200, a higher-density version of the 737-8 that he claims allows Ryanair to carry more people at lower cost per passenger than than its rivals, who primarily fly slightly lower-seat-count Airbus models on similar routes. In fact, Boeing developed the 8-200 specifically for Ryanair’s business model. O’Leary labels it “the Gamechanger.”
In recent weeks, O’Leary’s been steadfast in stating that Boeing’s en route to solving its safety weaknesses, praising the general quality of its aircraft, leaving no doubt he’ll honor all his orders and in all probability, exercise his options, and showing confidence Calhoun and top management. He’s still pointed, though less brutal than usual, in prescribing what Boeing must do to regain its one-time status as an exemplar of defect-spotting safeguards on the assembly line. In a March 21 release, O’Leary declared that “Boeing continues to have our wholehearted support as they work through these temporary challenges. But there’s no doubt in our mind that on the shop floor the systems and quality control in Seattle need to be improved.” In the meantime, according to reporting in the Wall Street Journal, other heads of big Boeing airline customers are demanding meetings with Boeing board directions—presumably to voice their frustrations sans Calhoun.
O’Leary bashes the European pols’ cheerleading over Boeing’s stumbles
O’Leary’s reserving his most potent broadsides for the European statesmen crowing on how Boeing’s decline is boosting the fortunes of the European champion, Airbus. At a Berlin conference of European leaders in late March, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire asserted, “I’d rather fly Airbus than Boeing. My family too. They care about me.” From an airline colloquy in Brussels, O’Leary fired back, telling Politico, “Some stupid French politician is going, my family don’t feel safe on a 737. Well, tell him to try flying on an Airbus with a problem with the engine that hasn’t been repaired.” That’s a reference to the defects in Pratt & Whitney engines that have grounded hundreds of Airbus planes across Europe.
The Irish firebrand took particular umbrage that a Frenchman would claim he fears for his life aboard a 737 when the aircraft’s been a huge hit with his fellow countrymen, and transporting them safely for years. “This summer, millions of French citizens and visitors will fly from France on Ryanair 737s. We’re based in Marseilles, in Toulouse, in Bordeaux, in Paris at Beauvais, all of which operate the 737,” O’Leary riposted, adding that “We live in a world where we encourage free speech and Donald Trump is talking rubbish and so is Bruno Le Maire.”
O'Leary's vision for Ryan Air
In 2009 while reporting a piece on the Irish economy, I interviewed O’Leary at his office, situated in what appeared to be a dumpy, converted hangar at Dublin Airport. He appeared in his charactertic uniform of jeans, an open-necked white shirt, his glasses parked high on his forehead. His office digs looked more appropriate to employee charged with finding lost bags than a CEO. We went downstairs to an employee lounge where O’Leary got a vending-machine espresso bought with a euro bummed from a flight attendant. At ease amidst the bruised plastic furniture and polyester carpeting, O’Leary declared, “We’ll mop the floor with every airline in Europe!” On the wall hung a calendar titled “Girls of Ryanair,” each month’s page displaying a flight attendant posing in a bikini. “They actually do work here!” O’Leary assured me. He was appalled that “woke” critics wanted to nix the displays, which Ryanair sold to raise money for charity. He lost out. “Girls of Ryanair” made its parting appearance in 2013.
O’Leary met Tony Ryan, who founded Ryanair in 1984, while working as the future billionaire’s tax accountant. This writer had dinner at a restaurant in Las Vegas with Tony Ryan in 2006, a year before he died, along with a Ryanair director. The quiet, softspoken Ryan appeared the antithesis of his volcanic protégé. That evening, Ryan spoke about the fantastic job O’Leary had done in saving his creation from bankruptcy upon ascending to CEO, and how his confidence in O’Leary allowed him the luxury of indulging his love for breeding racehorses at his multiple equestrian enclaves from the U.S. to France to Ireland, A few days later, I received a photo book in the mail from Ryan depicting these opulent, scenic properties. O’Leary’s lifestyle echoes the rural aristocratic bent of his predecessor. The CEO lives on an 1,000 acre farm, and shares Ryan’s passion, reportedly spending millions of euros a year on purchasing thoroughbreds.
Daft-sounding ideas and sayings are O’Leary’s trademark. He once claimed to consider putting coin slots on Ryanair toilet doors in a “pay to pee” initiative. On the frugality of one nation’s air travelers, he opines, “Germans will crawl bollock-naked over broken glass to get low fares!” O’Leary, who rivals Bono for celebrity status in Ireland, thinks he’s more deserving of the honor for which the rock star was famously nominated, but didn’t win. “Screw Bono,” O’Leary once said, “I should get the Nobel Prize.” How does O’Leary get away with zany eruptions that make even “Captain Outrageous” Ted Turner look mild? By delivering big time for shareholders in what’s been a mainly unprofitable industry, and laughing at his own wacky persona. “I’m Irish so I was born with bullshit on tap,” admits O’Leary.”We can’t help ourselves!”
O'Leary's critique of Boeing and its management
Still, O’Leary stresses that the setbacks in deliveries will strain Ryanair’s operations, and also prove a burden to customers. He expects that that Boeing will ship only 40 of the 57, 197-seat 737-8-200 “gamechangers” due by the close of 2024. The delays will make Ryanair short by ten planes, or around 2% of last year’s fleet, during the peak summer travel season. As a consequence, Ryanair will reduce frequencies on its existing routes, but won’t discontinue those where it’s recently launched new service. The grounding of what he predicts as around 20% of the competing Airbus fleet resulting from engine problems will further curb capacity across Europe. The aircraft shortages, O’Leary forecasts, will drive Ryanair to lift ticket prices around 10% above what it was charging last summer.
Also on offer are recommendations on what type of leaders should be running Boeing, and its recent miscues in emphasizing the wrong roles and maybe miscasting top managers. On the one hand, O’Leary praises Calhoun and CFO Brian West as “a good team who are the right track.” But he’s critical that the plane-maker named a new chief of the 737 program, but assigned oversight of the sector’s safety to another manager. “Why isn’t the person in charge of 737 in charge of safety as well?” he asked in an interview on the Skift site. “Boeing likes to talk corporate bullshit that they have a leadership team of 3,500 people but that’s a committee designing a fucking camel.”
Most of all, O’Leary rightly worries that the top airline brass don’t have their hands on the levers and valves that power the factory floor. Asked in the Skift interview what he thought of Stan Deal, head of the commercial airline business, O’Leary said that Deal is “a very good sales guy” but that “what Boeing needs isn’t necessarily a good sales guy. They need someone who’d going to sit there on a daily basis and do the grind. What’s the delay? What’s the problem, and fixing the supply chain.” For O’Leary the systems and quality control on the factory floor need a big improvement, and “Boeing needs leadership, he needs to sit in Seattle on a daily basis and [focus on] producing aircraft. They don’t need sales. They’re fully sold out until 2030 anyway.”
Wise words. O’Leary knows Boeing got in the mess by not heeding the warnings and seeking insights from the folks who fasten the bolts and attach the panels on these fabulous flying machines. Boeing needs top management that’s steeped in, and obsessed by, every detail in the production process, not the big picture, profit-driven brass that let Boeing stray from its roots in quality and engineering. And no ones sees that landing field more clearly than Michael O’Leary, Boeing’s disappointed customer, but still true believer.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
