the times | Saturday December 18 2021 2GM 49Saturday interviewNews
breached competition rules by
barring the agency’s credit cards and
preventing its customers from
managing bookings online.
In a separate case, On the Beach is
suing the carrier for £2.3 million over
money owed for flight cancellations
during the pandemic. On the Beach
claims it refunded customers whose
package bookings were cancelled
when the flights, arranged through
the Irish no-frills airline, were
grounded.I
n documents also submitted to
the High Court, the company
alleges that O’Leary has not paid
for these refunds, despite it being
part of the airline’s policy, and
industry regulations, to do so.
“We owe not one cent to them,”
O’Leary raged. “We have never
received a booking from On the
Beach. We receive bookings from
their customers — they are people
who are entitled to refunds. And we
have refunded almost all of those
customers directly.”
He is calling on the Competition
and Markets Authority (CMA) to
“clamp down on the pirates’
behaviour” and says that online travel
agencies regularly add a mark-up to
Ryanair’s fares and “dupe” passengers
into thinking they are booking
directly with the airline.
“The CMA do have power... theyGove in business... they’re all idiots’
have the power to name and shame.
And they love naming Ryanair and
shaming Ryanair. God help us, we’re
growing to 150 million passengers a
year, yet they won’t say any action on
these guys.”
The airline faced intense criticism
at the start of the pandemic for its
failure to refund passengers. “We
processed refunds to over 40 million
passengers,” he said. “It took us
months to process them all.”
He denies that the airline flew
empty planes to avoid paying out cash
to passengers. “This idea that we flew
around empty planes just to avoid
refunds is mad. [It’s] much cheaper to
sit the plane on the ground and just
do the refunds.”
Is O’Leary glad that, with all the
trouble of flying in the pandemic, he
has never tried to follow in the
footsteps of Freddie Laker, the
English businessman, and offer long
haul?
“I don’t think it’s helped us [through
the pandemic]. I mean, we’ve been
affected but there’s no doubt that
short haul will recover faster and
quicker than long haul. China is
locked up, Asians are not travelling.
The US transatlantic routes were
blocked until effectively
Thanksgiving. We recovered very
dramatically from July onwards.
There were lots of people holidaying
in Europe who would historically
have gone long haul to America or to
Asia. So we have benefited. There’s no
doubt that short haul has benefited.”
He says his decision to keep all of
his pilots and cabin crew current also
allowed the airline to bounce-back
faster. Yet, there are still new kids on
the block. Wizz Air, the low-cost
eastern European carrier, recently
tried (unsuccessfully) to take over
easyJet.
Its chief executive, Jozsef Varadi, 56,
says that O’Leary “deserves respect”
but made very clear, at the height of
the pandemic, that he doesn’t feel
sorry for his rivals and that “90 per
cent of the aviation industry is run
very badly”. Is the Irishman
threatened by his Hungarian
counterpart?
“He’s not as attractive as me,” he
says, laughing. “There’s only one
low-cost airline in Europe, that’s
Ryanair — Wizz Air are not able to
compete with it.”Michael Kevin O’Leary
Curriculum vitae
Born March 20, 1961, Ireland
Educated Degree in Business and
Economics from Trinity College
Dublin
Career He started out as an
accountant at KPMG. Worked as a
financial adviser to the Ryanair
founder, Tony Ryan, before joining
the budget airline in 1988 as deputy
chief executive. He became CEO in
1994 and has held the role ever
since at what is now Europe’s
largest airline. His racehorses
have won the Cheltenham Cup and
the Grand National.
Family He is married with four
children. They live in Co Westmeath.BARRY CRONIN FOR THE TIMESMichael O’Leary says
it irritates him to see
British passengers
disembark and be
excluded from
the EU queue at
passport control