Me Blog!

Almost everyone has a complaint about Ryanair or even several complaints but regardless, more and more people are flying with them. I’ve only ever flown with then three times myself, twice in 1998 and once from Dublin to Cork last year. It’s fair to say that the experience was pretty much what I expected and therefore was not all that bad.

However I have always been fascinated by their management and Michael O’Leary in particular. The upper management of Ryanair are pretty unique in the business world. Whether this is a good or bad thing you have to decide for yourself but the companies results speak for themselves.

So it was this morning that I found myself poking about their press releases. I spotted that it has been announced that their Director of Scheduled Revenue has resigned to take up the Chief Financial Officer role in none other than Aer Lingus. Naturally Michael O’Leary had to have a bit of a dig at the expense of Aer Lingus and I have to say that as press releases go this one is the among the finest:

“We wish Sean Coyle every success in his new role. We are pleased to see Aer Lingus recruit some decent management and hope that Sean will introduce some of the changes we have been calling for in Aer Lingus, such as reducing their short haul fares (which have long risen 5% in the last year) and scrapping their unfair and unjustified fuel surcharges which have been increased five times in the last year.”

Ouch!

In another press release Ryanair take a swipe at Which magazine:

“If you want low fares and great passenger service then follow our 60m passengers and fly Ryanair. If you want to buy a useless magazine with no insight whatsoever into air travel, then we strongly recommend “Which” – whose annual loony member survey is about as useful as a baggage tag in Terminal 5.”

Wonderful stuff!

All they need is an RSS feed on their PR page and it would rapidly become part of my daily reading schedule!

In keeping with my Ryanair theme for the day, here is a video with Michael O’Leary being interviewed about their new transatlantic service that they hope to have in the air soon. Be warned that the audio in the video is not safe for work!