:00:06. > :00:14.That is due to Central Engineering work that is taking place. It is
:00:14. > :00:18.now time for HARDtalk. The aviation business is in a mess.
:00:18. > :00:23.Fuel prices have increased, passenger numbers are squeezed and
:00:23. > :00:31.a number of airlines have gone out of business. But one airline has
:00:31. > :00:37.bucked the trend. That is why any error, which last year pulled in
:00:38. > :00:42.almost 80 million passengers. -- Rainier. My guest tonight is
:00:42. > :00:52.Michael O'Leary. He has become the anti- hero of the airline's
:00:52. > :01:00.
:01:00. > :01:05.business. But how far can he fly before he gets shut down?
:01:06. > :01:10.Michael O'Leary, welcome to HARDtalk. It is a pleasure to be
:01:10. > :01:15.back. Your business is doing pretty well all stop your profits are up
:01:15. > :01:20.and passenger numbers are looking pretty good. How close are you to
:01:20. > :01:26.the limits of how far you can go? think we have barely scratched the
:01:27. > :01:33.surface. Over the next ten years we would like to see passenger numbers
:01:33. > :01:38.double to around 160 million passengers. We would like to go
:01:38. > :01:42.across the UK and across continental Europe. It is limitless.
:01:42. > :01:50.A but the message from the aviation industry generally, and
:01:50. > :01:58.particularly in Europe, is to find growth you have to consolidate.
:01:58. > :02:03.Look at various other groups. They had tried to maximise their place
:02:03. > :02:13.in the industry by consolidation. Is that what he will have to do?
:02:13. > :02:13.
:02:13. > :02:23.do not think so. The industry has two different types of carriers.
:02:23. > :02:23.
:02:23. > :02:31.You have the ones that need people to connect. You will inevitably go
:02:31. > :02:36.with those ones. but it is expensive and not punctual. If you
:02:36. > :02:42.want to get there for a patching of the price, you go with us. You say
:02:42. > :02:48.they too can grow without limits in Europe and taking on other airlines,
:02:48. > :02:57.so why are you so keen to purchase Ireland's national airline? You
:02:57. > :03:07.will not let it go. We will carry 80 million passengers. They will
:03:07. > :03:08.
:03:08. > :03:18.carry around 9 million passengers. Their legacy, nobody wants it.
:03:18. > :03:18.
:03:18. > :03:23.do you want it? We can grow Aer Lingus as a separate brand. They
:03:23. > :03:30.already have a good brand. We think we can restructure Air Lingus and
:03:30. > :03:36.put it on the path of growth. have been accused of monopoly
:03:36. > :03:43.control. Is there any way you could soft and the takeover by giving
:03:43. > :03:48.away groups to a point with the EU is satisfied? We are prepared to
:03:48. > :03:58.give whatever the commission wants. Whatever concessions they want, we
:03:58. > :03:59.
:03:59. > :04:06.will give. You are prepared to give away? If need be. What we did in
:04:06. > :04:11.2007, our offer was rejected. This time around, we have those terms.
:04:11. > :04:15.We are hopeful that it will be approved. But we are still waiting
:04:15. > :04:23.for the commission to explain why an people are allowed to buy
:04:23. > :04:31.British Midland, clearly a emergent monopoly, but we have to jump
:04:31. > :04:37.through hoops. The EU needs a more consistent competition policy. On
:04:37. > :04:46.one occasion, we tried to rescue her Lingus and we have been shut
:04:47. > :04:52.down. There has been a lot of talk that you were already negotiating
:04:52. > :04:59.to get rid of your stake and make a tidy profit. We never comment on
:04:59. > :05:06.speculation. Our contract will be accepted. If it is not, we will
:05:07. > :05:15.appeal. We will not speculate on what we will do in the future. We
:05:15. > :05:21.had to be allowed to produce their Lingus. They will be broken up and
:05:21. > :05:27.disappear as a friend. Speaking about growth in a difficult
:05:27. > :05:32.business, another area you have looked at is getting a stake in one
:05:32. > :05:38.of Britain's growing upwards. It is part of the infrastructure of
:05:38. > :05:43.airports around London. It seems to be problematic. It seems the people
:05:43. > :05:46.who currently in the airport do not want you involved in any sale.
:05:46. > :05:56.Despite her ambition, it seems pretty clear that you cannot be
:05:56. > :05:59.part of it. That is not clear. We have been written to. We have been
:05:59. > :06:09.written to in recent weeks saying that people are not prepared to
:06:09. > :06:16.deal or engage with us. Any consortium that involves us. That
:06:16. > :06:20.is an extraordinary decision. The Competition Commission say they
:06:20. > :06:27.want a customer-focused sale process. I do not know how you can
:06:27. > :06:32.exclude the largest customer. We have accepted the reality. So you
:06:32. > :06:38.are backing out? We are withdrawing from the process because we do not
:06:38. > :06:44.want to prevent the number of other consortiums and investors from
:06:44. > :06:54.bidding. We look forward to working with whoever is the owner. We have
:06:54. > :07:00.faced worse. We think it has a bad future. You know that Boris Johnson
:07:00. > :07:04.is pushing very hard for a new airport on the Thames estuary. He
:07:04. > :07:11.is trying to attract business support for that. Are you prepared
:07:11. > :07:16.to back him? I think it is an insane idea. There has been no
:07:16. > :07:21.mediation policy. -- aviation policy. What we need is the
:07:21. > :07:26.multiplicity of airports. It is good for the UK and the south-east.
:07:26. > :07:33.They can compete with each other. You have a massive capacity
:07:33. > :07:40.constraint at each of them. The way to redress that is to build on the
:07:40. > :07:46.airports that already exist. The government needs to take this and
:07:46. > :07:52.say they are committed to an additional runway. They can cope
:07:52. > :07:57.with additional capacity. But you still do not end up with a hub
:07:57. > :08:04.airport that can compete with Singapore and elsewhere. Yes you
:08:04. > :08:09.would, it would be Heathrow. Let us talk about the culture of Ryanair.
:08:09. > :08:14.I think it is worth looking at the way you run your business. It is
:08:14. > :08:20.fair to say that you seem to take pride in ignoring everything they
:08:20. > :08:24.teach at business school about the customer being king, that care and
:08:24. > :08:29.comfort about the customer being first priority. That is not the way
:08:29. > :08:34.you run it. I think it is absolutely wrong. The difficulty is
:08:34. > :08:38.that most businesses talk about the customer being king but provide
:08:38. > :08:44.high-priced services and poor service. We think the customer is
:08:44. > :08:49.king because we deliver what passengers really want. Knows so
:08:50. > :08:58.charges, very low prices, the best on-time performance and low
:08:58. > :09:04.complaints. To take just one example, the lady who tried to take
:09:04. > :09:08.legal action against you because you charged her hundreds of pounds
:09:08. > :09:13.to print out boarding passes because she was not able to do it
:09:13. > :09:19.when she was in Spain. She came to the airport when she was in Spain.
:09:19. > :09:27.You charge to hundreds of pounds. It was in the small print. But she
:09:27. > :09:33.said that in the circumstances you did not. If the customer is truly
:09:33. > :09:39.king, why did you choose to take on that woman in that situation?
:09:39. > :09:43.did not choose to take on the woman. More than 99.9 % of Ryanair
:09:43. > :09:50.passengers agree at the time that the chicken on the website before
:09:50. > :09:56.the arrival. It is not small print. It is in big print. We send you an
:09:56. > :10:06.e-mail asking people to chicken. If you do not, you have to pay 50 quid.
:10:06. > :10:08.
:10:08. > :10:13.The lady did not. She then arrived at the returns lounged. I am very
:10:13. > :10:21.sorry. We regret that you did not comply with your agreement. That
:10:21. > :10:30.means you pay the fee. What I am getting to is that the style that
:10:30. > :10:35.you adopt, you said that if you mess up you have to pay up. And for
:10:35. > :10:40.you that seems to work. What works for us is that we are very
:10:40. > :10:49.sympathetic and we have simple policies. Do not show up asking for
:10:49. > :10:55.a free gin and tonic. To not arrive with a cheque in back if you do not
:10:55. > :11:02.have a ticket for it. When and 99% of passengers comply with these
:11:02. > :11:06.rules. What we say to the 0.1% is to not expect us to break the rules.
:11:06. > :11:11.What I am driving at and is interesting to people trying to run
:11:11. > :11:19.businesses around the world is how it works so well for you. Who
:11:19. > :11:23.deliver messages that turn you into the anti- hero of aviation. A
:11:23. > :11:32.couple more examples. You floated an idea that you might try and fly
:11:32. > :11:38.your planes with just one pilot to save money. Then you said, long-
:11:38. > :11:42.term, you love the idea of standing room areas in the back of the plane.
:11:43. > :11:48.Birth of those are never going to happen and you know it. But to seem
:11:48. > :11:54.to like creating these controversies. I am not attracting
:11:54. > :11:58.publicity. We are thinking outside the box. We are trying to make our
:11:58. > :12:05.air fares even lower. There is some point that there will be one pilot
:12:05. > :12:10.fights. To quote your own PR office, they admitted later that idea was a
:12:10. > :12:18.publicity and advertising sand. should never trust anybody's
:12:18. > :12:26.publicity Office. The West's Afghan over
:12:26. > :12:33.Afghanistan. But they do not have any passengers on board. They have
:12:33. > :12:38.explosives on board. Never is a long time. I understand it is not
:12:38. > :12:47.likely to be happening in the next five-ten years. The technology is
:12:47. > :12:54.advancing all the time. It may take 10, 20 years. But we believe that
:12:54. > :13:03.people will be flying wanderings. In Stansted, there is a driverless
:13:03. > :13:09.train. Statistically, there are quite safe. It is a constant quest
:13:09. > :13:14.in Ryanair to find ways to question existing orthodoxies. So that we
:13:14. > :13:17.can make things more affordable for passengers. But she will probably
:13:17. > :13:23.acknowledge that while people respond well to the low-cost
:13:23. > :13:33.message they want to be sure that safety is never compromised. We ran
:13:33. > :13:37.
:13:37. > :13:42.into a particular set of problems In Spain, three of your planes were
:13:42. > :13:49.forced into emergency landings in Valencia. There were are questions
:13:49. > :13:54.about how much fuel your planes were carrying. The press has
:13:54. > :13:58.reported memos in which your pilots are being told they need to get
:13:58. > :14:04.special authorisation to carry fuel which is a few hundred kilograms
:14:04. > :14:09.above the minimum threshold. Is that true? A no. They had three
:14:09. > :14:14.fuel emergency landings in Valencia. They are the only fuel emergencies
:14:14. > :14:20.we have had in the last 18 months. There was bad circumstances in
:14:20. > :14:26.Madrid that evening. All of the planes flew for one up for more
:14:26. > :14:31.than scheduled. All around 30 minutes of reserve fuel. In
:14:31. > :14:34.exceptional circumstances. The Civil Aviation Authority has
:14:34. > :14:43.confirmed that there were 20 such landings in the last ten years.
:14:43. > :14:49.This is not unusual. -- this is unusual, not unprecedented.
:14:50. > :14:57.Spanish pilots union claims that Ryan Air Pilots are confronted by a
:14:57. > :15:03.cost cutting exercise on fuel that You around the limit of doubt.
:15:03. > :15:09.cannot trust what you are told. What does not get reported is the
:15:09. > :15:15.official confirmation from the Irish Aviation Authority which says
:15:15. > :15:20.our fuel policy complies fully with all EU requirements. Does it not
:15:21. > :15:25.worry you bring your own pilates, quoted anonymously, say things like
:15:25. > :15:31.this "the authority of the pilot is being taken away by Ryanair and
:15:31. > :15:36.this policy on field could lead to more fuel emergencies than before."
:15:36. > :15:43.It is unfair to quote an anonymous pilot. They are anonymous because
:15:43. > :15:50.they dare not speak out. These are lies. Your pilots are lying? How do
:15:50. > :15:54.I know it is my pilot? It is anonymous. You have confirmation
:15:54. > :16:00.from the European safety regulator which confirms that Ryanair's fuel
:16:00. > :16:03.policy fully confirms that complies with the lot. We follow the same
:16:04. > :16:12.rules as the other European airlines. That is why more than one
:16:12. > :16:18.million Flight's, we have only had three fuel emergencies. There were
:16:18. > :16:22.exceptional weather circumstances in Madrid. I am driving at a
:16:22. > :16:27.perception that, as Ryanair expanse, and you have talked about ambitious
:16:27. > :16:31.plans for the future, it may have to revolt. I want to quote you
:16:31. > :16:38.something said by Michael O'Leary a couple of years ago. Never believe
:16:38. > :16:43.temple stopped he said "I think there will be a time for it is
:16:43. > :16:47.appropriate to replace me. In two three years, Ryanair will need a
:16:47. > :16:50.different face, a different personality, someone who will care
:16:50. > :16:57.about fuel and the environment and all but staff because then they
:16:57. > :17:04.will be a big company and that will not be me." I qualified that remark
:17:04. > :17:10.by saying there were a number of including Stansted, the double
:17:10. > :17:17.airport issue, the future of Aer Lingus. -- Dublin airport. I think
:17:17. > :17:24.once we have tackled all of those issues and Ryanair is set fair
:17:24. > :17:31.Witham plan, it will be time for me too well. I will tell you what
:17:31. > :17:35.entreat me about the comment that you made about two or three years,
:17:35. > :17:40.I wonder if that's something different might be a role in the
:17:40. > :17:45.public domain and Ireland. World you have been leading this business,
:17:45. > :17:50.your own country has got itself into the worst sort of economic and
:17:50. > :17:57.political mess. I wonder whether you see a role for yourself in
:17:57. > :18:02.trying to get our island out of the hole that it is in. No. There is a
:18:02. > :18:07.great danger because people of limited ability like myself, you
:18:07. > :18:12.might occasionally get lucky and be good at one particular job. I think
:18:12. > :18:17.I am good at running a kneeling. You get into dangerous territory of
:18:17. > :18:22.when you think you can walk on water. -- running in Ealing. I do
:18:22. > :18:26.not know about dealing with the economic problems and Ireland. Many
:18:26. > :18:33.successful business people have gone into politics and had a
:18:33. > :18:39.disaster. You have been mouthing off about what you think I'll and's
:18:39. > :18:45.problems are. This is a democracy. Everyone can have an opinion. --
:18:45. > :18:52.Ireland's problems. I just wonder, you have said you want to see an
:18:52. > :18:57.end to what you call too much welfare, you want to cut
:18:57. > :19:01.entitlement, you want to privatise the health system. This is in a
:19:01. > :19:09.country which is going through the most intense period of austerity.
:19:09. > :19:15.Do you think that the Irish people are ready for that? I think it
:19:15. > :19:23.needs to happen at some point in time in the not-too-distant future.
:19:23. > :19:31.Everyone is having been behind the banking crisis. Ireland as an
:19:31. > :19:34.economy has a fiscal deficit of about 15 billion a year. We take in
:19:35. > :19:44.about 35 billion and we spend about 50 billion. That is simply
:19:45. > :19:45.
:19:45. > :19:50.unsustainable. One way of dealing with it would be to raise some tax.
:19:50. > :19:55.1.3 million euros a year, your salary. You'll get 20 million euros
:19:55. > :20:00.for the dividends. Not quite that but not far off that. You a very
:20:00. > :20:05.wealthy man. I am also the largest single taxpayer in the country.
:20:05. > :20:09.Adult paid 12 million euros in tax to the Irish government. You have
:20:09. > :20:15.also said that you are so fed up with being tax but you might walk
:20:15. > :20:19.out of the country. I get fed up with me and my family are tax to
:20:19. > :20:23.the hilt and the money is squandered on doing things like
:20:24. > :20:32.being Sinn Fein politicians 50 million euros to buy toner
:20:32. > :20:38.cartridges. There is a 15 billion deficit every year. Unless you
:20:38. > :20:42.close that deficit, you will not close taxation. There is not enough
:20:42. > :20:48.people and the country to pay 15 billion euros in tax a year.
:20:48. > :20:52.something that strikes me about Ireland as an outsider, after the
:20:52. > :20:58.Celtic Tiger, what we see in this country is immigration on a serious
:20:58. > :21:04.scale. On average, every day in this country, 238 people are
:21:04. > :21:09.leading and most of them are young Irish people. If you were starting
:21:09. > :21:15.out after school or college today, a young Michael Levey in Ireland,
:21:15. > :21:20.out get out of here? -- Michael Levey.
:21:21. > :21:25.grew up during the last recession in Ireland. We need a programme
:21:25. > :21:31.that eliminates the fiscal deficit. Unless you eliminate that debt is
:21:31. > :21:37.it, we cannot return to growth. Ryanair delivers rapid traffic in
:21:37. > :21:42.tourism growth here, 5 million passengers a year. There is only 20
:21:43. > :21:47.million passengers in total. We could grow by 25 % over a five-year
:21:47. > :21:51.government and we cannot get a reply by from the Government. The
:21:52. > :21:56.fire was an American multinational, he would be building statues,
:21:56. > :22:02.giving the tax breaks in giving me but I want. When you are an Irish
:22:02. > :22:06.company, roadblocks are put in your way. You have chosen to answer in
:22:06. > :22:10.an economically. Talking about economic changes and the forms you
:22:10. > :22:14.would like to see. Is there not something deeper than that? Is
:22:14. > :22:19.there not something wrong with the political culture in this country?
:22:19. > :22:23.If you turn on the news, you see a whole host of the country's top
:22:23. > :22:30.bankers, property developers and sometimes even politicians who are
:22:30. > :22:33.being hauled over the coals for this sort of cosy, crony stick
:22:33. > :22:38.relationship which has developed in this country which allowed people
:22:38. > :22:42.to make vast amounts of money and, frankly, build businesses that were
:22:43. > :22:48.based on a pack of lies. Is there not something wrong with the
:22:48. > :22:52.culture if that is allowed to happen? There was a big property
:22:52. > :22:56.bubble here, as there was in Spain, Greece, and other European
:22:56. > :23:01.countries. Ireland is also responsible for a great success
:23:01. > :23:07.stories, Ryanair and not the least of them. Have you had to play the
:23:07. > :23:11.crony game to get things done? Thankfully, Thankfully,e has not been
:23:11. > :23:16.a great deal done in this country in recent years. A substantial
:23:16. > :23:25.point. A lot of your business is overseas. The figure used to be 40
:23:25. > :23:30.%, now it is 10 % for traffic. have said in the past that Ireland
:23:30. > :23:40.and the EU is dominated by half- wits and idiots. Why, if that's the
:23:40. > :23:45.case, are you asking the Irish people to vote for the fiscal
:23:45. > :23:50.treaty that is currently under discussion? Because it is painfully
:23:50. > :23:53.self-evident that we don't have any alternative. We are borrowing 15
:23:53. > :23:57.billion a year to sustain the current government's spending
:23:57. > :24:01.programmes. The only people who will lend us that money is the
:24:01. > :24:05.European Union. We'd better vote for it because it's the only show
:24:05. > :24:11.in town. We cannot afford an Icelander overnight devaluation