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| Ryanair is much more than an airline – it’s a parable for our greedy times | |
| (13 days later) | |
| It was Ryanair’s AGM on Thursday and investors at the Dublin get-together seem to have been unusually grumpy. One bolshie shareholder, retired mechanic Brian Graham, even called for “heads to roll”. Two big US pension funds refused to endorse the proposals for senior pay. Others muttered anxiously about “poor disclosure” and executive bonuses. But the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Once it was all over and the smoke had cleared, the share price sat pretty well where it had been at breakfast time. | It was Ryanair’s AGM on Thursday and investors at the Dublin get-together seem to have been unusually grumpy. One bolshie shareholder, retired mechanic Brian Graham, even called for “heads to roll”. Two big US pension funds refused to endorse the proposals for senior pay. Others muttered anxiously about “poor disclosure” and executive bonuses. But the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Once it was all over and the smoke had cleared, the share price sat pretty well where it had been at breakfast time. |
| Michael O’Leary, the man who brings to his airline the kind of embodiment of values that Sports Direct’s Mike Ashley gives to sports clothing sales, claimed he was wearing sackcloth in mortification for the “boo-boo” of running out of pilots. This has led to the cancellation of more than 2,000 flights, inconveniencing 300,000 passengers, news initially announced without letting anyone know which 300,000 passengers’ plans had just been shredded. It was a “fuck-up” with the pilot rotas, O’Leary explained, with that guileless charm that typifies his airline’s relationship with its customers. | Michael O’Leary, the man who brings to his airline the kind of embodiment of values that Sports Direct’s Mike Ashley gives to sports clothing sales, claimed he was wearing sackcloth in mortification for the “boo-boo” of running out of pilots. This has led to the cancellation of more than 2,000 flights, inconveniencing 300,000 passengers, news initially announced without letting anyone know which 300,000 passengers’ plans had just been shredded. It was a “fuck-up” with the pilot rotas, O’Leary explained, with that guileless charm that typifies his airline’s relationship with its customers. |
| Yet although Graham may have wanted O’Leary’s resignation, most investors prefer his way with a business. Ryanair’s share price has doubled since 2013. O’Leary and his business are the dark side of Europe’s psyche: in a kind of medieval morality tale, we love what they do even as we acknowledge the dislikable way in which they do it. We moan about stagnant pay and then go online to buy cheap flights to the sun subsidised by other people’s stagnant pay. We are eagerly complicit in conduct we deplore. We sustain a system that only works to our benefit in the immediate present. We have sold our soul, or at least other people’s secure jobs and decent wages, for serial holidays abroad. | Yet although Graham may have wanted O’Leary’s resignation, most investors prefer his way with a business. Ryanair’s share price has doubled since 2013. O’Leary and his business are the dark side of Europe’s psyche: in a kind of medieval morality tale, we love what they do even as we acknowledge the dislikable way in which they do it. We moan about stagnant pay and then go online to buy cheap flights to the sun subsidised by other people’s stagnant pay. We are eagerly complicit in conduct we deplore. We sustain a system that only works to our benefit in the immediate present. We have sold our soul, or at least other people’s secure jobs and decent wages, for serial holidays abroad. |
| Like Mephistopheles, O’Leary’s genius is that he knows our weaknesses. He flaunts his knowledge and we laughingly buy into his brilliant strategy. He has made it part of the Ryanair style to taunt passengers’ appetite for the 50p flight with what are amusingly called ancillary charges. That is, anything that isn’t the seat on the plane. These generate 20% or more of the airline’s multibillion-pound profits. He shamelessly tests his passengers’ tolerance with novelties such as charging for airport check-in, or for printing a boarding pass, or for calling to find out where your plane is – and we sign up for more. | Like Mephistopheles, O’Leary’s genius is that he knows our weaknesses. He flaunts his knowledge and we laughingly buy into his brilliant strategy. He has made it part of the Ryanair style to taunt passengers’ appetite for the 50p flight with what are amusingly called ancillary charges. That is, anything that isn’t the seat on the plane. These generate 20% or more of the airline’s multibillion-pound profits. He shamelessly tests his passengers’ tolerance with novelties such as charging for airport check-in, or for printing a boarding pass, or for calling to find out where your plane is – and we sign up for more. |
| Many of the people you meet in the course of being flown around Europe on Ryanair are not employed by Ryanair. Like some of the pilots who have just been told they have to delay a week of their holiday in order to make up for management mess-ups, they are subcontractors, or sometimes subcontractors of subcontractors. Obviously, no union enjoys any recognition. | Many of the people you meet in the course of being flown around Europe on Ryanair are not employed by Ryanair. Like some of the pilots who have just been told they have to delay a week of their holiday in order to make up for management mess-ups, they are subcontractors, or sometimes subcontractors of subcontractors. Obviously, no union enjoys any recognition. |
| O’Leary has tried to insist that any case involving Ryanair and its workers can only be heard in the Irish courts (the European court of justice intervened to stop him). The company sues workers such as striking Spanish baggage handlers while taking a minimalist approach to the airline’s own legal obligation to, say, compensate passengers whose flights have been delayed. It can do anything it likes, because we go on flying Ryanair. Through our eager support, he has made his airline into the biggest carrier in Europe, and it seems poised to grow even bigger by taking over the failing Italian flagship carrier Alitalia. | O’Leary has tried to insist that any case involving Ryanair and its workers can only be heard in the Irish courts (the European court of justice intervened to stop him). The company sues workers such as striking Spanish baggage handlers while taking a minimalist approach to the airline’s own legal obligation to, say, compensate passengers whose flights have been delayed. It can do anything it likes, because we go on flying Ryanair. Through our eager support, he has made his airline into the biggest carrier in Europe, and it seems poised to grow even bigger by taking over the failing Italian flagship carrier Alitalia. |
| This is the monstrous offspring in the marriage between deregulation and consumerism. Ryanair was founded in 1984, the outrider of the Irish economic boom of the 1990s. It has become a perfect reflection of our greedy refusal to look an implausibly cheap horse in the mouth, let alone examine its back teeth. It is a parable of our times. | This is the monstrous offspring in the marriage between deregulation and consumerism. Ryanair was founded in 1984, the outrider of the Irish economic boom of the 1990s. It has become a perfect reflection of our greedy refusal to look an implausibly cheap horse in the mouth, let alone examine its back teeth. It is a parable of our times. |
| Ryanair delights in reminding us of our part in the process of making it one of the world’s most successful airlines. It makes no secret of the fact that planes only make a profit when they are in the air, flying, full. The humdrum business of loading baggage on and off is not a convenience for the paying customer, but a costly delay that hits the bottom line. It is the Walmart of the air, piling us in, selling us cheap. | Ryanair delights in reminding us of our part in the process of making it one of the world’s most successful airlines. It makes no secret of the fact that planes only make a profit when they are in the air, flying, full. The humdrum business of loading baggage on and off is not a convenience for the paying customer, but a costly delay that hits the bottom line. It is the Walmart of the air, piling us in, selling us cheap. |
| Yet remember this: from time to time, in the interests of market advantage, management makes a finely calibrated concession. It changed the rules, for example, on cabin luggage. It then changed them again: there is never any compunction about berating the passenger who has the temerity to game the concession. Are passengers taking the piss, a Ryanair executive was asked recently, as he moaned about people using the Ryanair concession of toddler luggage allowance to pack, well, toddler luggage. Of course they were. So the cabin luggage allowance was cut back: now it’s a fiver for priority boarding if you want to bring a wheelie bag onboard. What next? | Yet remember this: from time to time, in the interests of market advantage, management makes a finely calibrated concession. It changed the rules, for example, on cabin luggage. It then changed them again: there is never any compunction about berating the passenger who has the temerity to game the concession. Are passengers taking the piss, a Ryanair executive was asked recently, as he moaned about people using the Ryanair concession of toddler luggage allowance to pack, well, toddler luggage. Of course they were. So the cabin luggage allowance was cut back: now it’s a fiver for priority boarding if you want to bring a wheelie bag onboard. What next? |
| The thing about exploitative relationships is that it is easy to forget that it takes two to play. That means that Ryanair’s very transparency, its extreme sensitivity to market pressures, makes negotiation possible in contrast to how challenging an online giant like Amazon feels impossible. Ryanair has planes, check-in desks, people. It also has investors. Six months ago, seven pension funds pulled €300m worth of assets because of concerns about labour disputes. The airline may be the creation of a consumerism untrammelled by anything but air safety regulations, but it is still selling something, and we are the buyers. | The thing about exploitative relationships is that it is easy to forget that it takes two to play. That means that Ryanair’s very transparency, its extreme sensitivity to market pressures, makes negotiation possible in contrast to how challenging an online giant like Amazon feels impossible. Ryanair has planes, check-in desks, people. It also has investors. Six months ago, seven pension funds pulled €300m worth of assets because of concerns about labour disputes. The airline may be the creation of a consumerism untrammelled by anything but air safety regulations, but it is still selling something, and we are the buyers. |
| This article was amended on 22 September 2017, to make it clear that the charge of £5 is for priority boarding, not for a wheelie bag | This article was amended on 22 September 2017, to make it clear that the charge of £5 is for priority boarding, not for a wheelie bag |
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