Saturday, September 15, 2007

Cheap Fares, Kiwis, and No Barf Bags

Ryanair's Michael O'Leary in another memorable interview. An excerpt from the introduction:

There's a bit of P.T. Barnum in Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of Irish low-fare air carrier Ryanair. He's pulled such stunts as driving a tank to a competitor's headquarters to declare a price war and dressing up as the pope to promote new routes to Rome. Most recently, when Britain's Advertising Standards Authority said Ryanair was incorrectly claiming that its flights were faster and cheaper than the Eurostar train for traveling between London and Brussels, he sent the frowning officials a copy of "Mathematics for Dummies."

Along the way, he's built Ryanair into Europe's largest airline by passenger volume and, along with such rivals as easyJet, transformed travel on the Continent. From London or Dublin one can fly not just to Nice but to Nantes, not only to Rome but to Riga, and often for less than the price of a cab ride across town.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is really funny. O'Leary and Ryanair were profiled in the book Less is More by Jason Jennings. I would highly recommend this book if you have not read it. Just commit to reading the first chapter and you will be hooked.

Michael Wade said...

Matt,

That's a great book and I strongly second your recommendation.

O'Leary is a fascinating guy.

Ed said...

I think that O'Leary is a truly great publicist of the Ryanair brand, and has certainly drummed up endless free advertising here in Ireland through his various stunts and one man battles against airport authorities. However rumours are that O'Leary may be considering retirement in the near future, a move that I think would leave Ryanair in a bad situation, somewhat like Apple could be without Steve Jobs etc

Anonymous said...

That is an interesting consideration on what Ryanair would be like without O'Leary. I guess it is a test to how effective he has been at setting the companies culture. If the culture is to be the low cost people mover of the EU, then they should be fine. If it is to have fun and follow in the shadows of O'Leary and his antics, then yes, they could be in real danger.

GE might be a good example of how the successor has taken over a company with a definite culture.

Michael Wade said...

Ed and Matt M,

Interesting points. I think that fearing for the succession is especially wise when the departing CEO is charismatic and may have inadvertently created a climate of dependency.