Original subtitles

Ryanair dominates the European sky.

Valued at 30 billion Euro,

its low-cost model has made travel affordable for everyone.

Starting as a scrappy disruptor...

Cheers to Ryanair.

...that struggled to fly.

Ryanair was in the brink of collapse.

This was your life's work to date.

I mean, did you feel devastated by the whole thing?

Knocked off my ass, if I may use a crudism.

Until a wiry new CEO executed a brazen low-cost model.

ARCHIVE: His standard dress for work is blue jeans and check shirts.

And transformed Ryanair into one of Europe's top ten airlines

by the end of the 20th century.

Everything you do contributes towards the bottom line.

Michael O'Leary's obsession with watching pennies

had the pounds in their millions take care of themselves.

ARCHIVE: Ryanair profits soared by 33% last year.

Oh yeah, it's all about money, isn't it?

It's low cost...

...At all costs.

As the 21st century creates new chaos for Ryanair...

(COMMOTION)

I would pay no attention whatsoever to Elon Musk, he's an idiot.

...it's up to Michael to navigate the turbulence ahead.

If he can't go through you, he'll go around you.

RADIO: Ireland, you can have the last word.

The last word. With Matt Cooper.

On Today FM.

Cathal Thomas and Marion McKeown are with us.

Where to start?

Actually, Marion, you know where we'll start...

Michael O'Leary didn't go into Ryanair

because he had any great love of aviation.

It wasn't his ambition to make Ryanair what it is now.

It was his ambition to make as much money from it as he could.

Michael? Yes?

(CAMERAS CLICK)

Got it?

One of six children, he grew up in the 60s and 70s

in the farming community of Mullingar.

Michael O'Leary was a child of privilege,

no matter how much he might like to portray himself as an ordinary man.

He was educated in Clongowes College,

an elite boarding school with a Jesuit focus on discipline.

Michael's father was an entrepreneur

and ran a wool textile company in Mullingar.

He would have observed his father getting into financial difficulties.

He was the type of guy who was always buying when everyone else

was buying and always selling when everyone else was selling,

and that is not the way to actually get rich in business.

I suspect that there was always a degree of concern

for Michael O'Leary that the lifestyle that he was becoming

used to could be taken away from him.

After graduating from Trinity College,

he entered the world of business.

He went where he felt he could make money.

He wanted to make money

and make as much money as he possibly could quickly.

If you cut him,

his DNA, he bleeds private sector market economy.

PRESENTERS: Happy New Year!

The dawn of the new millennium, an era of excitement and optimism.

A happy new year to all of you.

♪ (CHEERFUL MUSIC)

ARCHIVE: The much-hyped bug

which threatened to throw the world into chaos failed to bite.

(MUSIC FADES TO STOP)

Michael O'Leary was about to face a global crisis

that would test his mettle.

(TRAIN RATTLES)

That day,

I got a call from the Stansted press team

saying we think you'd better come up to our office.

There's something going on that you need to see.

♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC)

I was flying four sectors, four flights that day,

and when we came back to Dublin and landed,

just like everybody else was shocked.

The world lost some of its innocence and some of the carefree nature

of travel was lost.

You instantly think of the crew.

ARCHIVE: Cabin staff overcome with emotion who burst into tears,

aware of the fate that had befallen their colleagues

on the four hijacked aircraft.

September 11 was just a complete watershed

in everything but in aviation.

The World Trade Centre attacks, 9-11 brought aviation to a halt.

Airlines were cancelling orders, cancelling routes.

Boeing couldn't sell an aircraft for love nor money.

ARCHIVE: Continental Airlines is laying off 12,000 people.

BUSH: One of the great goals of this nation

is to restore public confidence in the airline industry.

One of the effects obviously was with all these cancelled orders,

Boeing and Airbus had orders cancelled left, right and centre.

They might have to shut down the production line

for their short-haul aeroplanes.

And to shut down a production line and restart it cost billions.

So for anybody looking to buy aeroplanes, it was a buyer's market.

Michael ordered more aircraft when nobody was doing so.

Michael O'Leary arrived in Seattle and said,

I'm going to buy all those aircrafts.

The employees cheered him.

The deal of 100 new aircraft for $9 billion

brought Boeing back from the brink of collapse.

It was certainly one of the best deals in history.

Michael seized the opportunity,

a gamble in a world now nervous of air travel.

Something about Michael O'Leary is that

he just seems to have that natural antennae.

He has that understanding of what people are like

and how they're going to behave.

He said, no, people will want to go and fly.

Ryanair needed to fill these new planes.

People questioned it at the time.

He's not going to find the markets for this.

He's going to get saddled with debt.

Ryanair's reaction was to sell seats to London for a tenner

and we filled the aeroplanes.

He just made the market explode.

People who'd never flown before and who'd never thought of flying

and who'd never thought of a mini-break in Paris or Brussels,

suddenly those people were booking flights and getting on planes

and getting out of Ireland just because it was so cheap.

The new 737s went through a Michael pass.

♪ (WHIMSICAL MUSIC)

The obsession on building a lean machine

is what makes tickets low and what makes profit higher.

When they went to Boeing to figure out,

well, how can we make this operating model cheaper?

They actually turned the stairs into a step in the process to make,

again, onboarding and offloading cheaper.

Which meant they didn't have to buy gates closer to the terminal,

which meant they could buy cheaper gates, which meant costs were low.

Did you really want to charge to use toilets on Ryanair planes,

yes or no? Yes.

If I can get rid of the 2 toilets at the back of the planes,

I can add 6 extra seats.

With 6 extra seats, I can lower everybody's airfare by another 5%.

There's been a lot of skimping on things like bolt upright seats

which don't recline, nowhere to actually put your things

because they got rid of the baskets on the back of the seats.

They didn't want to have to go to the effort of cleaning them.

Part of the role of the cabin crew is to go through the cabin

with a black plastic bag,

which aesthetically isn't very pleasing

for the customer that's sitting there.

Ryanair and Michael O'Leary had this intuition

that they needed to grab our attention,

to grab the microphone.

And grab the microphone is exactly what he did.

In economy, it'll be very cheap fares, say 10 Euro,

and in business class, it'll be beds and blowjobs.

(LAUGHTER)

Like, it's a very competitive market, you've got to get ratings.

So the way to do it is to bring a real, live, knock-down,

drag-out fight on air.

A visceral attrition is gold dust to the media.

We've spent the last 12 years competing with these buggers

and we're not damned if we're going to stand aside

while somebody shovels them another lump of money

to stuff it to us again for the next couple of years.

He's well capable of hamming it up.

And he does ham it up.

These are Ryanair staff.

It is very ick. It's just awful.

You create your own publicity.

Stupid politician.

He's very good at doing that in fairness to him and has been.

Michael, I might have an idea. You shut up!

Why pay somebody else when you can do it like Michael O'Leary does?

Ryanair understood the idea of the attention economy.

They knew that their ads and their press antics were all

to serve the purpose of grabbing our attention.

Have we done anything wrong? No.

It was the things that people wanted to say but couldn't,

but this brand were ballsy enough to do it.

The way he talks about people who are heavily obese.

These monsters taking up two seats.

For fecks sake, who says that?

He would do things in interviews

like climb up on the boardroom table for the photographer.

And he understood, and we understood as well,

that it was a bit of a performance.

He deliberately is provocative in everything he does

because he's selling a brand.

I think Michael has very creatively learned how to get a persona across

that people relate to and that people buy into.

But I still think the quiet, shy, retiring Michael

is probably still there, probably in Gigginstown with the horses,

but they're the only ones that get to see it.

Right, that's our photos.

ARCHIVE: In the beginning, you could only hear the news on RTE

on the wireless.

Then you could see it on the telly.

But from today, there's a third way to watch and listen to the news,

on the internet.

When the world entered the wide web,

Ryanair was one of the first airlines

to take us through the looking glass.

What you did then was you called someone.

You called either an airline or got in touch with a travel operator or

you visited their bricks-and-mortar offices and you arranged things.

What is significant about Ryanair from a digital standpoint

is they were very early to own the channel.

You no longer have to visit a travel agent that has to take a cut.

That can cut a lot of costs.

♪ (COME FLY WITH ME)

Looking at the website from 2000, it's really simple.

You've got just a list of the routes and they are astoundingly low.

There's routes for £4 and £1.

Simple yet effective.

The website allowed people to buy directly from the airline.

And within 12 months,

they were seeing the majority of their bookings going via online.

OFF CAMERA: Cast your mind back to Celtic Tiger era Ireland.

ARCHIVE: This is the brave new world of the Irish economy.

One of the most buoyant economies in Europe.

The Celtic Tiger was like a really brash,

kind of out-there time in Ireland.

The Celtic Tiger brought so much more inward investment,

brought all the big companies in here.

With low-cost fares, people were flying out

and some people were actually getting up in the morning

and going to a job in another country.

Nobody surfed that wave quite as well as Michael O'Leary.

He just capitalised on it and made lots of money out of it.

With the click of a button, Ryanair found more ways to sell things.

Auxiliary income is all the extras in the upselling

that Ryanair would do.

The second you click book and you buy your ticket,

you are hit and bombarded with

a series of messages and prompts and pop-ups.

That could be anything from extras to food.

Extra baggage you bring on board, changing flights.

To scratch cards.

The scratch cards and things, but they still do the scratch cards.

Are you going to charge for people to actually have their seat numbers?

You will have the option of paying to select your seat

or you have the option of having a seat allocated to you for free.

It would be your choice.

Priority boarding is a bloody longer queue than the other one.

I don't know what's priority about it,

but it's worth an extra 20, 30 euros a flight for Ryanair.

These auxiliaries is what makes Ryanair profitable.

In all cases, without charges, they are optional.

Ryanair was not the only scrappy Irish airline to strike opportunity.

There was a little airline flying...

...initially from Galway Airport to the Aran Islands.

I got blown away with the

aeroplane flying across Galway Bay

and landing on this small little runway

and the sea is coming up on the other side.

I said, wow, this is mad.

Years afterwards, I remortgaged my home,

got a little bit of a loan from the bank and got a partner

and we bought the airline.

Aer Arann, a lifeline in the west of Ireland, had ambition.

Aer Arann. Aer Arann.

Income was quite low with a small number of passengers.

There was about half a million tourists coming to Galway City

every year and we'd put signs up, flight to the Aran Islands,

so passenger numbers started increasing and increasing.

In the 1990s, it began to expand.

So I said, we'll fly over Dublin and fly people to Manchester, London,

Glasgow, Edinburgh, even to France.

All of a sudden, like, the airline went from 2.5 million turnover

to about 120 in the space of probably about four years.

We're the fastest growing regional airline in Europe,

flying up to 20 flights a day

between Cork and Dublin and back down again.

Next thing was, O'Leary announces they're doing Cork-Dublin.

In 2006, Ryanair undercut Aer Arann, running routes at a loss.

I got a message from his secretary.

Basically said, Michael would like to meet you.

I went up and he had a big office. He says, it's not going to work.

If I were you, I'd go back to where you came from, Connemara.

Because I can tell you here now, it's not going to work for you.

But I was saying, Michael, I'm going to keep it going.

He said, well, why?

There's no leeway, it's black and white with him.

You know, you're either in or out.

Do this, if you don't do this, move on.

After years of battling an aviation goliath,

Pádraig would eventually face an even fiercer foe.

(EXPLOSION BOOMS)

ARCHIVE: This volcano in Iceland has erupted,

spreading a plume of volcanic ash across European airspace.

The unpronounceable volcanic eruption in Iceland

grounded flights across Europe.

ARCHIVE: Spreading volcanic ash has forced the cancellation

of hundreds of flights this weekend.

At worst, the volcanic ash could cause chaos for some weeks yet.

Aer Arann couldn't compete and are treated back to Connemara.

We didn't have the financial resource that Ryanair had.

Ryanair knew that.

But you have to stand back and admire what's been done,

and I do, and I respect that, and I respect Ryanair.

I spoke to Tony Ryan and he felt saddened by it, quite frankly.

But at that stage, Tony was quite old and his health wasn't great.

Tony Ryan died in 2007,

a major shareholder and respected advisor until the end.

He was one of the outstanding business

personalities of his generation.

He had seen Ryanair grow from a tiny single aircraft

taking off in Waterford to a Europe-wide network

carrying over 50 million passengers.

Tony Ryan founded two businesses, GPA and Ryanair.

World leaders.

One of the best entrepreneurs that Ireland ever produced.

Ireland should be the aviation centre of Europe

and then progress that of the world.

His ambition shaped Irish aviation.

Of all the aeroplanes in the world, half of them are leased.

And of those that are leased, about 10,000, 70% of them,

the aviation finance was done through Ireland.

We now have over 50 aviation leasing companies.

Aercap, we have SMBC.

For a guy from Thurles, that's pretty good going.

The passing of Tony Ryan, a captain of industry, a philanthropist

and a gentleman, was the end of a rarefied era of aviation.

A new era brought new battles.

You're on record as saying emissions are a load of bollocks

talked up by sandal-wearing Greens.

Which is actually technically true.

There's no evidence to suggest that the globe is warming.

Clearly, climate has changed. It will always change.

Michael O'Leary has been on the record over the years

about being quite sceptical about the whole idea of climate change.

And his argument, I think, to paraphrase, was

that the climate keeps changing and we've had ice ages

and we've had periods where the temperature's been a bit warmer.

Michael has, at times, resisted the reality of the climate crisis.

I try and avoid flying where I can.

Try and travel via the lowest impact method I can.

Aviation is probably one of the fastest ways

you can burn fossil fuels and produce greenhouse gas emissions,

which are the things that are heating the planet's atmosphere.

An aircraft is basically a massive fuel tank.

It's in the wings and it's in the fuselage or the body.

Jet fuel is perfect because it's very energy-dense.

Jet fuel is also very cheap.

So there is a global agreement, basically,

to avoid a tax on jet fuel.

If you buy a bottle of water in an airport,

it costs more per litre than the jet fuel going into your plane.

Cheap fuel has helped low-cost carriers like Ryanair

and others to flourish.

In July, we carried our one billionth passenger

in our 30 years of operation.

There's only 20,000 commercial airliners in the world,

but there's more than a billion cars, so in comparison,

it looks relatively small.

But actually, it's a very few number of people doing it.

The issue is endless growth.

As more people take to the skies,

a crisis deepens that will collide with Ryanair's bottom line

sooner or later.

But first, Ryanair had more immediate fires to fight.

ARCHIVE: It was take-off today in the battle for the skies.

By the noughties, EasyJet was on the rise

and threatened to hit Ryanair where it hurt, its profits.

Because this is an inaugural flight, I'd like to buy everybody a drink.

EasyJet, you know, talk the talk, but they don't walk the walk.

Over the years, they fought with everybody they

could fight with pilots, baggage handlers,

cabin crew, you name it.

I have a feeling Donald Trump

studied the Michael O'Leary story.

I mean, Trump got elected by being

an arrogant little brat, saying things other people wouldn't say.

Michael, you know, if he can't go through you, he'll go around you.

EasyJet began to edge into Ryanair's turf.

I believe there is a lot of scope for carriers like us to expand

into the European continent.

I think they only opened the base because there was rumours

that Ryanair were going to show up and skip all of these.

I thought, shit, we better open a base quick

before Ryanair get here.

Competition was starting get hot.

I think people were replicating the Ryanair product,

so they needed to find a way to compete with other airlines.

Ryanair shouldered its way into battles with their rival.

But Michael's shtick started to bite him

on his (DING DONG TONE) tail end.

Fed up with meanness, people chose the easy route.

You make real money in the airline business

from your last passenger.

The first 100 passengers, whatever,

are going to pay the costs.

It's the incremental ones that actually give you the profit.

If you're upsetting your passengers

so much that you're not getting the last passenger,

the second, and the third last passenger,

you're actually reducing your profits.

Lots of the complaints that they've had over the years

have been justified. I mean, there's a lot of bad manners

in the treatment of passengers.

We just came to the airport this morning and they said the flight

was cancelled, so yeah, very annoyed.

I think the great thing about Ryanair is we deliver the best

customer service in the world airline business,

which is why we're the largest airline in the world.

Is the customer always right?

No, the customer is nearly always wrong.

(LAUGHS)

It does feel still when you fly Ryanair that sometimes you as

the passenger are the enemy.

Ryanair's relationship with the consumer was very transactional.

I'm just providing you a cheap way

to get from point A to point B.

Often through a maze.

For anyone who has navigated the Ryanair website,

you probably have come across some things

that would be qualified as deceptive or dark patterns.

Practises that are misleading to users.

It was a bit of an obstacle course.

You could have to answer 70 different questions.

If you wanted to decline adding insurance

as a cost to your flight,

to find that option, you had to go to the dropdown menu

of the list of countries

and find 'do not insure me.' These things aren't by accident,

they're by design.

You could end up with travel insurance that you didn't want.

Ryanair coming in the cheapest,

you've got to weigh it up, haven't you?

You know, take the risk or pay that bit more money, I suppose.

So the flip side of low fares seemed to be rubbish service.

The Trump Jet, bringing the US billionaire

on his first trip to Dunbeg Golf Resort.

There is still a road to be travelled, the road of a lasting

and creative reconciliation.

By 2014, Ryanair faced a hard, bitter truth to swallow.

It might need to start being nice.

I think there was a realisation within Ryanair that you couldn't

keep pushing customers and keep introducing new rules and keep

making the experience slightly less pleasant every time

people flew, or eventually people would stop flying with Ryanair.

I think the decision they made at the time was people don't like

the brand as much, so therefore we have to be nicer.

So here are the Johnsons.

Ryanair launched the Always Getting Better campaign

as a response largely to the backlash against

some of their PR stunts.

♪ Destination anywhere.

It did not overpromise.

It didn't say, "We will ever be the best."

We were a little bit nicer.

At the time, I seem to recall Michael O'Leary

being quoted as saying, "Well, if I had known

being nice was good for revenues,

I would have done it sooner."

So as you can see, always getting better.

In a funny way, that really tells us so much more about

Michael O'Leary and his brand

than maybe the outrageous behaviour.

It speaks to his pragmatism.

I would personally come up to the boarding gate and kiss

your bum as well as you depart.

Instead of being aggressive towards passengers,

they're now sort of generally kind towards passengers.

That may be Michael maturing as he gets, gets older.

I take personal responsibility and I sincerely apologise.

Remember the trumpet noise?

(TRUMPET SOUND AFFECT)

Oh yeah, when you landed on time?

They stopped that now. It worked.

Bookings have gone up since Ryanair became a bit nicer.

It pays to be nice.

By 2017, Ryanair flew more people across Europe than anyone else.

Well, I became non-executive chairman of Aer Lingus in 2007.

Aer Lingus at the time was in bad shape.

They were losing hundreds of millions of euro.

They were also very influenced by Ryanair and therefore wanted

to try and mimic Ryanair, but having trade unions and

long-term work practises, that just wasn't possible.

REPORTER: Michael O'Leary's plan is to buy shares held

by workers for 60,000 on average each.

Aer Lingus had already fought one takeover bid from Ryanair.

But smelling blood in the water, Michael tried again.

He was always going to have issues on competition

with both Irish airlines from an island

being owned by one party.

Aer Lingus is too small and too weak to survive

as an independent.

The whole idea, you argue a case about opening up

and deregulate, and then you want to take over and take a monopoly.

He was wrong on that.

REPORTER: It's all about the consumer, said Neelie Kroes.

She had to ban Ryanair's takeover of Aer Lingus

because the combined

airlines would have accounted for 80% of passengers carried

into and out of Dublin Airport.

But he actually never bid enough where the board had to say, well,

gosh, this actually is a good thing for our shareholders.

REPORTER: So what happens to the 25%

of Aer Lingus that Ryanair owns?

The Commission says Ryanair can keep it because it's

not a controlling stake.

We in Ryanair realise that it's part of our national duty

to try to preserve this relic of this prehistoric dinosaur

for the sake of the Irish nation.

And we could make a few quid doing it.

So I think he was possibly just playing with us,

that he could afford to splurge a little bit

of the shareholders' funds

to have this bit of a game of cat and mouse with Aer Lingus.

Do you fly Ryanair?

I have.

I would not a lot, being a nationalist.

I would still like my national airline.

But I have flown Ryanair, yeah.

I like to see both of them succeed.

Ah, Bertie, but sometimes everyone just can't get along.

Ryanair's own staff have battled with their CEO for years.

♪ Times are getting hard, boy.

♪ Money's getting scarce.

Dublin Airport has for many years been a kind of trade

union la-la land.

Ryanair has always been staunchly anti-union.

If you had to negotiate every change with a union or

with workers' representatives, that would slow things down.

The raison d'être of trade unions is to increase pay,

terms and conditions, etc.

Ryanair said, we want to move fast, we want to reduce costs,

we want to reduce labour costs.

Pilots were once aviation superstars, enjoying a protected

status with prestige and clout.

Michael O'Leary is on record at various points of, you know,

being quite disparaging about pilots.

Pilots are glorified taxi drivers.

It's a very complicated taxi, and they are very skilled to be

able to do it, but at the end of the day.

When Michael was disparaging about the pilot job

and saying, you know, that it was a bus driver,

the implications of getting it wrong are a bit more serious.

As Ryanair want to do, if you want to bring down prices,

then you got to cut costs.

And in aviation, of course, a major cost is labour.

So bringing down pay and terms and conditions of pilots

and other airline staff.

We weren't recognised formally as a union because

the company was non-union. CHANT: Ryanair must change!

Ryanair must change!

Staff and contractors were subject to the whims of a

penny-pinching Michael.

The pilots just wanted a fair deal,

a living salary that was somewhere

in the ballpark of what your peers were being paid

in other places. Ryanair argued

it engaged in collective bargaining, so didn't

need to talk to trade unions. And the courts agreed.

So that was seen as a big victory for Ryanair

because basically they didn't have to deal with

the trade unions. And the Supreme Court had basically said,

well, look, Ryanair is arguing we have a system of negotiation,

and the Supreme Court said maybe they do.

Michael O'Leary, a tough negotiator,

as tough as they come.

Then in 2017, something extraordinary happened.

I got a call from RTE, can you do this 6:1 news?

Ryanair has just announced it's going to recognise trade unions.

(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS)

Went into the studio.

What was your reaction when you heard this surprise announcement?

When I realised it wasn't in fact April 1st, I think like everybody

else, I was absolutely stunned.

Going to recognise unions?

A surprise. Shows the company is progressive.

They've put them up against the wall.

However, the miracle was not from Michael's heart but his head.

A chronic pilot shortage had forced Ryanair to cancel flights.

REPORTER: Ryanair says it has already contacted

all the customers affected either by text or by email.

So they're facing mass cancellations.

I think at one point Michael O'Leary said he'd cut his

arms off before he'd negotiate with trade unions.

Overnight. An armless Michael changed his mind.

We have very good pay, very good conditions,

but we are in a learning process.

We're learning how to deal with the unions.

The way Ryanair operated before unions

and the way Ryanair operates now,

it doesn't seem to be that different.

You wonder what all the kerfuffle was about,

why they didn't do it earlier.

Ryanair always was the scrappy upstart fighting against

domestically Aer Lingus, for example,

fighting against the traditional flag carriers, trying

to establish itself.

But now it is the dominant player in the commercial aviation

industry in Europe.

Ryanair found another tool in its tool belt to fight its

cost-cutting corner.

Big businesses tend to use the courts and the law

as a weapon.

For those of you interested, it's been a very good

morning today for Ryanair.

Yeah, it's fair to say Ryanair is fairly litigious,

he says, shifting in his seat.

The company has litigated against over-regulation,

against certain aspects of EU regulation which it has seen as

kind of slowing down growth, slowing down progress.

We can now show Lufthansa's high fares

Ryanair's low fares in an ad and give German people a choice.

But of course, it's fundamentally what enabled Ryanair's success is

the opening up of the European aviation market,

you know, which is a function of the EU, the open skies and so on.

Ryanair will try save costs any way it can.

That means they've taken to court from time to time.

They'll do it, and if they lose, they'll pay, and if they win,

they'll be happy as Larry.

They'll push everything as far as they can.

Every now and then, the courts have managed to put

some schmacht on Ryanair.

MAN: They had an advert that was Europe's greenest airline.

Yes, it's true on an individual flight basis, but then when you

take into account their total emissions, they're actually

the biggest polluter.

That was challenged in court, I believe, and they

had to remove that.

And that hidden "Do not insure me" option, that went to court too.

And Ryanair ended up being fined 850,000 euro for that practise.

So they certainly push to the limits what they can do.

As the natural world is pushed to its limits, aviation has begun

to reckon with its role in the disaster.

REPORTER: Dramatic climate changes are taking place

worldwide, and a little later

than the rest, Ireland is beginning to feel the effects.

It's not bullshit pie-in-the-sky stuff.

These aircraft burn 18% less fuel, carry 4% more passengers.

You get a 20% reduction in fuel consumption, CO2 emissions, and a

40% reduction in noise emissions.

Engines have gotten more efficient, so that is helping,

but it's not solving the problem.

We're still going to be causing a lot of emissions.

Sustainable aviation fuels, like biofuels,

are not a simple solution.

Michael O'Leary has said himself that there is not enough used

cooking oil in the world to power one day of green aviation.

But we just don't eat that many chips.

Hydrogen is very expensive and requires a complete

redesign of aircraft.

It takes 10, 15 years to design and develop an aircraft.

It takes another 15 years to produce that aircraft.

Decisions we make today influence 2050 already.

Transporting over 200 million people a year,

Ryanair's total carbon emissions tells the real cost of low cost.

If you look at the top 10 emitters in Europe,

they're all coal power stations, and Ryanair is in there as well.

And so it's kind of, it's been described as

the kind of the new coal.

Unless we phase out coal, the airline industry will be

one of the biggest emitters.

But 2020 was not the time to tackle this particular crisis.

We've taken extraordinary measures here tonight because

these are frankly extraordinary times.

I'm alone here right now, no audience.

Strange, eerie feeling, I won't lie to you.

Something else was happening that kept us all busy.

What was it? Oh yeah.

It was going to be a very, very good year in 2020.

They were riding high, they were very close to Lufthansa,

about 150 million passengers a year.

REPORTER: Ryanair said its passenger numbers for April, May,

and June will be 99.5% behind forecast.

There were clear skies over Dublin Airport today,

which should have been buzzing ahead of the holiday weekend,

but instead aircraft were grounded, the terminal empty.

Once again, global aviation was brought to a grinding halt

by an unprecedented catastrophe.

MICHAEL: My view is it'll be soft for the next couple of weeks,

And if it settles down over Easter,

then people will begin to rapidly focus on summer travel.

COVID, nobody'd ever seen anything like it.

People were talking about airline failures.

It lasted longer than anyone in aviation thought.

We announced this morning we're going to cut 50% of our staff.

That's, we think, the minimum we need just

to survive the next 12 months.

He was very, very determined that this was not

going to leave Ryanair damaged in any way,

the way it left so many

other airlines across Europe damaged.

Damaged and taking handouts.

This is Branson's second go at trying to fleece the British

taxpayer for state aid.

Frankly, if he's worried about Virgin,

he should write the cheque himself.

I think the thing that has always marked Ryanair out from its peers

and its competitors is Michael's leadership, clarity of thinking,

determination, and frankly, being able to make the right call

on the significant majority of occasions.

Also doing the counterintuitive thing.

While other airlines were struggling, Ryanair

invested in 75 new 737s.

What Ryanair did that was different

was they kept the aircraft

certified, and they kept the pilots licenced.

He knew that his opposition, other airlines, would be slower

to get out of the blocks.

It was hugely expensive.

Over a billion euro was lost.

It got back into gear because basically it never

went out of gear. They flew all their planes.

Because of clearer airspace, they were able to fly them even

more punctually than they had before.

And literally, that changed the game.

Once again, when aviation was knee-deep in sludge,

Ryanair's pragmatism fixed its horizon on calm skies ahead.

The result was phenomenal.

Passenger numbers went up to 180 million and eventually 200

million in the post-COVID period.

Ryanair are flying at something like 130% of the

pre-pandemic figure.

In July 2021,

I took on the role as head of social media at Ryanair.

And I walk into the room, and the first thing he said to me

was, "Who the fuck are you?"

And I went, "Well, I'm the person that runs social media."

And he goes, "You're too old to be working in social media."

Ryanair arguably were geniuses at newsjacking.

The brand attached itself to the story of the day.

Good evening.

The Conservative Party in the UK, who are being a bit reckless

with their own rules around COVID,

and they were having plenty of parties in Downing Street.

Now is the time for us all to summon the, the discipline

that will carry us through.

They issued this scale, this 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 of the COVID

guidelines for being in the UK.

Our team came back with a really great remodel to scale side

by side, which was very bold and very brash and really bad

language and was really high risk.

A couple of days later, the Financial Times wrote

an article, "Brands need to be more Ryanair."

Michael O'Leary put handwritten notes on them

and put on our desks, "Keep up the good work,

signed by Michael."

That was like the papal smoke coming up within the office.

Ryanair is a brand made for social media.

Ryanair is competing against not just every airline,

but every brand, influencers,

even our mum's pictures on Facebook.

It was the millennials, it was the privileged generation

just really hated Ryanair because their expectations were so high

that they were expecting hot towels, USB chargers, free Wi-Fi,

all for the price of 10 flights.

It just didn't make sense.

The job for Ryanair to do was to change perceptions.

Knowing that we had this DNA from Michael, from being,

like, really irreverent on things in the world and self-deprecating

about the product, being real about what the product

was, we got this notoriety of being this,

for want of a better word, a bastard brand on the internet.

We were grabbing their attention and entertaining them.

There are very few brands, I think,

where the chief executive is so

deeply intertwined with the company's identity.

Failure was applauded within the business.

Because it means that you're taking

risks and you're being brave.

Despite his success at Ryanair,

Michael bowed out after just over 2 years.

And exited in his style to a flurry of headlines.

Ryanair became so big and such a success that

it was a polarising brand,

not just by marketing but by business terms.

It was ruthless and curious and relentless and pushed

the boundaries of everything.

♪ DRAMATIC MUSIC ♪

BEHIND CAMERA: Can you remember the first time you flew?

Oh...

I do remember my first time flying.

It was probably on a Viscount to Paris, my first flight. Yes.

Rattling along.

A single engine contraption. Which was a death trap, probably.

I first flew when I was 12.

And it was a very big treat.

And I do remember almost every second of it.

The first view above the clouds.

It's magical.

I was very nervous when it came to the take off.

Absolutely terrified. It was white knuckles.

It was really exciting getting an aeroplane.

I didn't even know anybody, I don't think, who had been on an aeroplane,

other than my dad.

It was a huge, huge, huge thing for me.

On a big plane going across the Atlantic.

It was magic.

♪ SONG: Jo Blankenburg - "Sentience (feat. Clara Sorace)" ♪

I think what I love about flying is...

just...

...the freedom.

We get a unique and privileged view of the Earth.

I love flying.

Everyone that I know loves flying.

We want to preserve the ability to fly because it is so magical.

NARRATOR: Our freedom to fly comes with a high price.

As temperatures rise,

aviation faces more tension than ever before.

♪ SONG: Anita O'Day - "Let's Face the Music and Dance" ♪

Climate collapse may be Michael's greatest challenge yet.

O'LEARY: We do have to make travel greener,

so we're doing everything we can.

Feeling the heat,

in 2021 Ryanair launched its partnership

with Trinity College Dublin

with the Ryanair Sustainable Aviation Research Centre.

You see behind me here the game changer 737 MAX

that Ryanair is a customer of.

16 percent lower fuel burn percent with 4 percent more passengers.

♪ Let's face the music and dance.

Delicious cake.

I wonder how sincere Michael O'Leary's

apparent recent conversion to environmental issues is.

♪ SONG: Frank Sinatra - "Bein' Green" ♪

Their 4 million investment is mere coins for a company

worth over 30 billion.

We need to go a lot further, a lot faster.

I don't think Michael O'Leary's...

♪ It's not that easy bein' green

...dedication, shall we say.

Our belief in ESG is entirely sincere.

It's a bit of a box-ticking exercise.

It's something that he knows many of his investors actually do.

But let's face it,

Michael O'Leary's ambition is to get more and more people to fly.

Ryanair flies 630 planes

and is aiming to fly 300 million passengers by 2034.

People want to continue to travel,

and there's no way of putting that genie back in the bottle,

thankfully.

Despite more efficient planes,

their ever-expanding empire is only increasing its emissions.

Which keeps Ryanair in the hot seat.

One thing is for sure,

is that there will continue to be enhanced scrutiny

around any brand's perceived green-washing.

For Michael, a call to action might need more stick than carrot.

The bigger challenge facing Ryanair when it comes to sustainability

is less the consumer and more regulators

and what the regulatory framework might impose on it.

So if Ryanair were to launch an always getting greener campaign,

for example, they could certainly expect scrutiny

and the need for greater transparency.

The regulation is tightening

and tightening all of the time in relation to climate

and climate change.

Ryanair's old foe, regulations, looms towards them.

Regulators are thinking about the common good.

Businesses are thinking about their shareholders.

Michael O'Leary and Ryanair will be sure that Ryanair

will be contributing to the increase in numbers within Europe,

climate change or not.

Unless, and it's a big if,

the European Commission and member governments of the European Union

decide that they're going to take measures to limit

air travel to try and combat climate change.

It's difficult for us, particularly in Ireland,

because we're an island nation.

You remove aviation or reduce and restrict that more and more,

we're probably going to regress as an economy off the back of it.

Ireland would be a very different place without Ryanair.

Cheap flights have changed how we live.

Because we're this small damp rock on the outskirts of Europe

and it's always raining and it's always grey,

Irish people are just dying to get off the rock.

And Michael O'Leary came along and offered a way that

everybody could afford to do it.

When once we fled, we can now return.

So my original flight was actually booked for tomorrow,

but I purposely changed the time of the flight

so I could come home to vote.

This is a revolution that James Connolly would have dreamed about.

Aviation was brought to ordinary people, regardless of their income,

regardless of their age, regardless of their status.

Ireland now is unrecognisable compared

to where it was 40 years ago.

I don't think 40 years ago we had the self-belief that we have now,

or the sense that we could internationalise our business.

It's phenomenal, Ryanair.

It could have been anywhere.

I think the fact that we got it, you know, the headquarters is here,

their taxes are here, I mean, that's big.

That's big for Ireland.

Ryanair has brought us closer to Europe.

The European Union made Ryanair.

Ryanair's influence in Europe is totally profound.

They are truly a pan-European operator.

O'LEARY: Ryanair has done more for European integration, I think,

than any other company in the history of the European Union.

We have made it possible for people to travel all over Europe

all year round at fares that nobody thought were imaginable.

Most of Ryanair's success is down to Michael's leadership.

He turned it from an airline that was loss-making

and would have probably gone under

to an airline that was able to

challenge all of the legacy carriers

and essentially democratise privatise air travel,

big financial deals with Boeing.

These are all things that hit the Richter scale.

When our Taoiseach, Michal Martin,

went to the White House and said,

sitting across from Trump people may not realise Ryanair,

one of our biggest airlines, for example...

TRUMP: I'll trade. (CHUCKLES) I'll trade.

...they buy more, the two of them together buy more

Boeing aeroplanes than anybody else.

How many aeroplanes we buy from you?

Single biggest customer.

In the world for a little country of 5.5, 6 million people.

It is the most extraordinary commercial story in any country.

Okay, Ivan, he's not the Messiah.

He's a very clever businessman.

He revolutionised all that by really having no respect

for anything other than the bottom line.

For a nation that loves to champion

successes that punch above our weight,

Ryanair rarely gets a boast.

Oh, I flew with Ryanair.

There's this automatic instant reaction for us to tut

and roll our eyes like, "Fuckin' Ryanair."

On paper, you know, he's anti-establishment,

funny, he's direct, he doesn't like politicians.

He should be sort of the Everyman,

and we should love him more than we do.

The national sport in Ireland is begrudgery.

Michael O'Leary and Ryanair

represents the Ireland that hustles,

not the Ireland that hosts.

Can I say a cute whore? Yeah.

It is funny that we don't cherish them more

because as a nation we do tend to love a cute whore.

This cute whore has made Ryanair what it is today.

O'LEARY: I'm proud of the fact that it's Irish,

it's managed in Ireland,

it's run in Ireland.

I'm only guessing this, Michael is scared shitless of retirement.

His energy and his experience and his contacts

could be put to the benefit of Ireland.

Having his mind focused on how do we solve

one of the biggest crises in our generation

would be very exciting in terms of what's possible in aviation.

I think that would be a great legacy for him to look back on.

Hmm, but that almost sounds like do-gooding.

What about the bottom line?

Think of the shareholders!

I think that the next generation of Michael O'Learys

will come out of innovation.

Innovation and technology and research have

really become the passports to people getting,

you know, filthy rich.

Ahh, thank goodness.

Ryanair has battled past crises

and competition to earn its place at the top.

EasyJet talk the talk,

but they don't walk the walk.

But in aviation, the only certainty is uncertainty.

Will low-cost continue to dominate how we travel?

With each day bringing new and strange battles...

If he wants to invest in Ryanair,

we would think it's certainly a significantly better investment

than the financial returns he's earning on X.

...and climate and geopolitics collapsing,

perhaps no airline is more fighting fit for the punches to come.

None of us know,

but I think it is time for Europe to stand up to the US.

And if Trump wants to have a row with Europe, well,

let's have a row right back.

♪ SONG: Cream - "I Feel Free" ♪

I am free.

Subtitling RTÉ 2026.