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“If I could eliminate everyone’s luggage, I would have a far better airline.”
Michael O’Leary was Ryanair’s Chief executive when he spoke to the Financial Times.
The budget airline boss opened up about how his ideal airline would operate – but it might trigger nightmares for Ryanair’s customer base.
O’Leary’s dream plane would allow passengers to bring no bags on board. There would also be a toilet fee, and the entire flight would be focused on efficiency.
According to the Financial Times, O’Leary’s dream of a bagless carrier has been aided by the introduction of luggage fees. The costs have reduced the number of passengers that checked their bags from 80% down to 20%.
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The fewer bags, the quicker the plane can be unloaded and, accordingly, the faster the airline can ‘turn’ their planes, which are all currently Boeing 737s, over at airports.
The company uses the same aircraft model for all flights to ensure that the crew and pilots are able to work on any trip.
O’Leary says that automated bag drop kiosks can also improve efficiency, mainly because they are not subject to argument.
“You can’t tell a kiosk your bag was lighter when you weighed it in the kitchen this morning – you just have to pay,” he declares.
It was also the goal of efficiency improvement that led to Ryanair’s controversial 2009 suggestion that it could charge passengers to use the toilet – O’Leary believed that this scheme, which was disallowed by regulations, would encourage passengers to visit the bathroom before flying.
As well as helping with efficiency, the toilet charge plan would have also reduced the airline’s fuel bill through lightening the plane – something which reducing bag numbers does too.
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Reducing fuel consumption is evidently a priority for O’Leary who says that he is ‘obsessed with decarbonisation’ because it leads to reduced costs.
But he wants to reduce the airline’s environmental impact because ‘of the accountant’ in him, not because he is ‘some sandal-wearing environmentalist’.
It is the aircraft’s efficiency and quick turnaround that keeps Ryanair operating within Europe and the top of north Africa: long haul flights do not allow planes to be used as frequently each day but O’Leary is ‘quite happy to be limited’ to flights of five hours and below.
Ryanair estimates that it will have 800 planes and 400 million passengers in 2040, even if they only fly short-haul routes.
Before then, by 2030, the airline hopes to extract €12 to €14 net profit per passenger, an increase from the current €11 average.
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At the moment it is O’Leary who manages aircraft negotiations, cash generation and balance sheet discipline but he has told the FT that he would stand down in ‘five to ten years’.
For his successor, the challenge will be maintaining the ‘maniacal focus on costs’, something which O’Leary does in part by enforcing strict rules on his customers.
“If you don’t follow our rules we will torture and hate you.” The businessman said, “If you obey our rules we will love you.”
Travel News by The Olive Press.
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