Michael O’Leary: ‘I’m Irish so you’re born with bullshit on tap’

Within minutes of entering Michael O’Leary’s office near Dublin airport, I quickly find myself at the receiving end of the jokey banter of Ryanair’s voluble boss after he asks me who I flew with from London.

When I tell him that I travelled with rival airline British Airways and the flight landed 10 minutes late, Mr O'Leary's eyes twinkle with amusement. "You went for the high-cost option — and you were delayed," he laughs. "You'll be flying on Ryanair soon."

In his trademark open-necked shirt and jeans, the chief executive of Ryanair is in high spirits. And he has reason to be cheerful. The Irish airline, Europe’s largest budget carrier that he has headed since 1994, is benefiting after its decision almost two years ago to treat its passengers as customers rather than adversaries. After two profit warnings in 2013, when oil prices were twice today’s level, its new strategy helped boost its growth. Last month it increased full-year profit guidance by a quarter, to a range of € 1.18bn to € 1.21bn.

Gone are the days when he cultivated his deliberately spiky image, which saw him threaten to charge overweight passengers more and tell customers asking for a refund to “f*** off”.

Has Ryanair entered boring middle-age as it marks its 30th birthday this year? “We are probably moving from [BEING]what I would call errant teenagers into being somewhat more adult in the way we both interact with our customers and communicate with the outside world,” Mr O’Leary says.

He acknowledges that the cheeky start-up nature of the airline was alienating some of its customers, who preferred to pay a higher fare elsewhere because Ryanair irritated them too much. But in the early days of the airline, the provocative image was a deliberate way to generate lots of free publicity. Mr O’Leary says he became a “cartoon pantomime villain”.

“I’m Irish so you’re born with bullshit on tap. We can’t help ourselves,” he says. The economic imperative helped, he says, because the airline did not have the money for marketing. “You’ve got to go out and make as much noise as you can yourself. It becomes pretty simple.”

But for those that enjoy the humour that Ryanair brings to the featureless plains of modern corporate life, the Irish carrier’s new grown-up image does not mean the end of silly photo opportunities, during which Mr O’Leary has dressed up as anything from a mobile phone to the Pope. Only weeks before our meeting, he dressed as Batman’s sidekick Robin to promote a new partnership with CarTrawler, a car website.

“Photo editors have a job to do so let’s give them what they are looking for: middle-aged men in tights,” he laughs. The new, improved, “cuddly” Ryanair comes with offices to match. While its former headquarters next to Dublin airport looked tired and scruffy, the new building is colourful, with bright pictures chosen by staff on the walls. These range from an unconscious, drunk dog dressed as Father Christmas to giraffes and local football teams. There is even a games room and an emergency aircraft slide that takes you down to reception. It is a far cry from the mean low-cost airline that once issued, albeit for its publicity value, a memo banning employees from charging their mobile phones at work to save on electricity bills.

Behind Mr O’Leary’s desk in his glass-walled office is a painting of his racehorse, Trifolium, a nod to the 54-year-old’s passion outside work. Mr O’Leary owns racehorses at his Gigginstown House Stud, part of his estate near the town of Mullingar, an hour’s drive west of Dublin and where he grew up. His brother Eddie manages the Gigginstown operation and was the better rider of the two growing up, he says.

Would he consider retiring and focusing on racehorses? “Christ, no! Racehorses are not a business. Racehorses are just a money pit,” he exclaims. “I enjoy jump racing only because there’s not much else to do during winter but it’s boxed off into ‘hobby’ and that’s it.”

In fact, retiring seems to be far from both his mind and his wife's, former banker Anita Farrell. "Anybody who has to live with me would not put pressure on me to retire," he jokes. "Jesus, I'm only 54. I'm such a beloved leader here. Can you imagine the devastation that I would cause if I announced on Monday I'm leaving?"

More than 20 years after he became CEO, Mr O’Leary clearly continues to enjoy the challenge of growing the no-frills behemoth. In 1991 the company flew 650,000 passengers on six aircraft. This year that will increase to an expected figure in excess of 100m with more than 300 aircraft. He admits that what he enjoys most is working and says he will be involved in Ryanair as long as it is doing something “interesting”.

He is tied into leading the airline until 2019 after signing a contract last year that replaced a rolling year-on-year arrangement in place since 1997. This year he will receive a basic package of € 2.4m, up a third on 2014. According to one Irish newspaper’s estimate he is worth more than € 755m, largely thanks to a 3.7 per cent stake in Ryanair.

His 1,000-acre estate is his escape, where he enjoys walking through the fields with his four children — three boys and a girl all under the age of 10 — collecting horse chestnuts on a recent weekend. “I enjoy it as a release or as a change from running Ryanair or flying around Europe. I grew up on a farm. I wanted my kids to do the same.” His children are not very aware of his public image, he says, as he does little media in Ireland beyond corporate interviews and the occasional racehorse item.

"I've always been very careful. If you Google me, apart from horseracing, there'll be nothing out there personally about me or my family, my wife and kids. We live quietly," he says.

Before he became an extrovert chief executive he was a tax accountant. The son of a businessman, Mr O’Leary was educated at Ireland’s best schools. He claims he was never interested in aviation as a child and still is not. “People ask me do you fly? Well yes, in the passenger seat. Would you like to learn how to fly? No! What the hell for? It’s incredibly dull.” His entry into the industry was an accident, he says, through working as an accountant for the Ryan family.

“It lost humongous amounts of money for the first two or three years, in the mid-1980s. I recommended very strongly that they shut it down because it would never, ever make any money, which goes to show my lack of basic foresight,” he says.

Mr O'Leary was sent in to staunch the losses, which saw him cut the fleet by about 12, to six aircraft. After visiting Southwest Airlines in the US, the original low-cost airline, Ryanair found its successful model.

Throughout our conversation, Mr O’Leary often leans back in his chair and waves his hands around to emphasise a point. He is set on plans to grow annual passenger numbers to about 160m in six to eight years, and almost double profits to € 2bn.

He says he respects his competitors, acknowledging that Carolyn McCall, easyJet's chief executive, has done a "good job" at repositioning the brand away from trying to compete with Ryanair on price. "We're Lidl and Aldi. You don't want to get into a price war with us," he says.

Mr O’Leary says he will be more vocal in supporting Britain staying in Europe, despite having been critical of European regulation. “The EU gets a lot of unfair criticism in the UK, but it has delivered much for the UK economy. It needs people, companies like us, to actively campaign.”

Meanwhile, Ryanair will maintain its softer approach, with the occasional bit of mischief. As Mr O'Leary says at the end of our interview: "I haven't sworn. I've been very good. I'm learning. I'm trying to get better." - Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2015