O’Leary: My head won’t roll
O’Leary brazens out latest storm, admitting he got it wrong, but still believes he should stay in charge
MICHAEL O’Leary insisted yesterday he won’t lose his job as Ryanair CEO as the airline battled to save its reputation following ongoing flight cancellations.
The budget carrier ‘messed up’, Mr O’Leary admitted in a rare moment of contrition on a day which saw Ryanair finally publish a full list of over 2,000 axed flights. Scores of flights from Dublin are cancelled in the coming six weeks due to chaos in the airline’s staffing.
RYANAIR was battling to salvage its battered reputation last night over the cancelled flights fiasco.
At an extraordinary press conference, Michael O’Leary admitted the airline had ‘messed up’, adding: ‘We come out with our hands up.’
Mr O’Leary’s hands may have been up, but his head was still firmly on his shoulders as he insisted nobody – least of all himself – would be getting the chop over the airline’s decision to cancel flights, leaving the travel plans of 400,000 customers in chaos. The airline made the cancellation announcement late on Friday afternoon but failed to publish a full list of the 2,024 flights affected until last night. It meant thousands of families had no idea whether they would able to go on holiday or not. Ryanair also failed to admit that some customers are entitled to compensation, as well as a refund, under EU rules. On a shambolic day for Ryanair:
O Its shares fell around 3% yesterday, knocking a further €560million off its market value;
O The compensation bill was expected to run to millions of euro;
O It finally published a list of the affected flights and claimed most passengers would still be able to fly on the same day.
The fiasco at Europe’s biggest carrier has been caused by changes to its holiday year – a backlog of staff leave means it has too few pilots on standby over the next six weeks.
That means any minor disruptions – such as weather problems – were causing knock-on delays for lack of staff cover. Ryanair chiefs decided to clear the backlog through the drastic last resort of cancelling flights.
Yesterday, a beleaguered Mr O’Leary accepted responsibility for the pilots’ scheduling ‘mess up’ which will see an average of 50 flights cancelled daily over the next six weeks, including a possible 150 from Dublin.
Speaking at a press conference in Dublin, Mr O’Leary said he doesn’t think his head ‘should roll’ as he needs to ‘stay here and fix this’.
Pilots with Ryanair receive six weeks leave per year, some of which comes in a block of four weeks. Mr O’Leary said the airline is now in the process of writing to pilots in a bid to buy back some of their leave. He said they would be better equipped to deal with the situation if they had blocks of two weeks rather than four.
Changes imposed by Irish regulators, in line with European law, forces Ryanair to conform staff holidays with the calendar year from January, requiring it to allocate that leave before the end of the year.
However, Mr O’Leary said that – while they thought they were managing the process – they have had too many ‘disruptions and we have overallocated leave. We ballsed up’.
He said: ‘I say sorry on behalf of Ryanair. We want to put our hands up, which is what we do when we make a mess. And we will try to learn from the mistakes... We clearly messed up in our rostering department. There should have been a better early warning signal, coming through the months of July and August, that there were going to be operational disruptions in September because we could only barely cover the roster – we didn’t have sufficient standby crews.’
He said the airline runs a daily roster of up to 800 pilots with between 100 and 150 on standby. But, at the moment, they are publishing rosters which have only ‘30 to 40 standby pilots’ which isn’t enough cover during disruptions.
The company said the cancellations have been allocated, where possible, to ‘bigger base airports and routes with multiple daily frequencies’ in a bid to minimise the damage.
‘In total there will be 50 flights cancelled on Mondays, there will be 44 on Tuesdays, 42 cancelled on Wednesdays, 48 on Thursdays, 52 on Fridays, 48 on Saturdays and 52 on Sundays,’ he said. This works out at an average of just under 50 cancellations a day.
The company last night published a full list of cancellations between September 21 and October 31. Customers on these flights were set to receive an email last night ‘highlighting the
alternative flights they can transfer to, hopefully, on the same day or, at worst, the next day’.
If customers are not satisfied by alternative flights offered to them, they have the option of taking a full refund and Ryanair said they will not try to claim ‘exceptional circumstances’ on the EU 261 compensation entitlements. It is estimated that up to 400,000 customers will be affected by the cancellations, which may cost the company up to €5million in lost revenue and €20million in compensation under EU rules.
Mr O’Leary moved to apologise to the 18million customers who were ‘unnecessarily worried’ over the weekend about their travel plans, due to the lack of clarity.
The airline supremo was in robust form as he told the media he – the largest ‘individual shareholder in Ryanair’ – didn’t ‘give a rat’s ass’ about the reports that the company’s share price fell in recent days.
Mr O’Leary disputed reports that 140 pilots were poached from Ryanair by rivals Norwegian Air, and said the number was under 100.
Last night, the Irish Air Line Pilots’ Association released an analysis of Ryanair’s pilot numbers and claimed up to 700 had left in the last year.
Referring to the regulation changes of calendar years, IALPA said the implications of these were flagged ‘at least an additional year in advance and all operators had ample time to prepare arrangements to deal with the changes’.
‘In explaining the ongoing significant level of flight cancellations, Ryanair have claimed that they arise because of the need to allocate leave to pilots in the seven months from the old “calendar year” date of April Fools day, before transitioning to the normal date of January 1,’ it said.
‘This seems a strange and unsustainable explanation as there is no EASA [watchdog] requirement related to leave in the FTL [flight time] regulations.
‘It is equally implausible as they had at least two seasons notice of the new regulations in which to put their house in order.’
They added: ‘A separate point of note is Ryanair is saying the problem will last for about six weeks.
‘This brings them to the winter schedule, with its reduced overall crewing requirement, which is further evidence of the real problem being a shortage of flight crew.’
Comment – Page 14 Brenda Power – Page 14 emmajane.hade@dailymail.ie