Hearts & Minds: Why O’Leary gets away with what you can’t

There will be plenty in comms who grimace at mention of Michael O’Leary. For them the Ryanair boss is a bogeyman, someone who defies convention, who deliberately sets out to provoke, and yet gets away with it. The latest headlines, they will say, proves their point. He is criticised for paying a small bonus to staff who ‘out’ passengers for bringing onboard a bag larger than the size limit. They are made to put it in the hold. O’Leary’s defence is that there are rules and they are trying to dodge them. Still, he is slated, not only for rewarding the staff for being so petty but also for only making it a tiny sum and for imposing a cap on how much they receive. So, what does he do? Only increase the bonus and remove the cap. The officiousness still remains.

But those who pan O’Leary fail to understand that he is being true to himself, to his customers and to his brand. Far from bad comms it is smart comms. His entire ethos is built on operating a cheap, no-frills but safe and efficient, airline. People love Ryanair because of it. They carry 200m people a year and of those, 200,000 are caught attempting to smuggle aboard oversize bags. The limits are not set by him but the authorities. If everyone behaved like that there would not be enough room in the cabin for luggage. Plus, while folks search for space in the overhead lockers, they are holding everyone up and the aircraft is not ready to take off.

O’Leary has always been like that. There was shock when he told a business lunch how he was at the Ryanair call centre and overheard a customer complaining. He took the phone and asked them, ‘which part of “no refunds” do you not understand?’ Others doing the same at their companies would come unstuck and find themselves torn apart in the media. It definitely falls into the category of ‘do not try this at home’. You can only act like this if there is a good reason, which is that you are remaining faithful to who you are, what you stand for, what it says on the tin. Think of it this way: how would it be if Ryanair allowed large bags to be carried aboard? Then it would cease to provide quick turnrounds and no longer be Ryanair.

Chris Blackhurst is one of the UK’s foremost business journalists. He was previously Editor of The Independent and City Editor of the Evening Standard.