Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Ruthless Ryanair could show us the future of aviation

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Aviation, nuclear power and public transport — along with good restaurants, golden retrievers and hand-knitted bed socks — are, as Julie Andrews put it, a few of my favourite things. So in a week when the news is as depressing as I can remember since the dark winter of 1973-4, I might as well write about all of them. I’ll try to find points of light along the way but it’s not going to be easy.

First the plight of airlines, now so extreme that it’s hard to foresee any outcome other than nationalisation for many major carriers. Even if the new ban on leisure travel ends, only pre-flight Covid testing and reduced quarantine can boost passenger numbers in the short term, while transatlantic routes will take years to recover. Cargo traffic is the only bright spot. IAG, parent of British Airways, Iberia and Aer Lingus, is the test case: its losses for the first nine months of the year were €6.2 billion — almost €1 million an hour — on revenues down by three-quarters. Even after a €2.7 billion rights issue, survival without state bailout (in this case perhaps a triple one) must be in doubt.

And yet Ryanair managed to lose just €197 million in the six months to September. That’s equivalent to only a quarter of the personal fortune of chief executive Michael O’Leary, who says — amid his usual stream of expletives about governments — that he expects resurgent demand next summer and is looking forward to the delivery of 30 new Boeing aircraft. Already Europe’s leading airline by passenger numbers, having flown 152 million last year, this ruthless operation could stand as the continent’s last large-scale private-sector carrier. O’Leary once called himself ‘an obnoxious little bollocks’, but he’s a formidable cost-slasher and cartel-buster. Now more than ever, he’s the future of his industry.

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