Michael O’Leary described the new passenger regulations as bureaucratic bunkum. When asked by Eoghan Corry what’s going to happen next he replied:
Michael O”Leary: “Nothing, like, you know, I mean, the compromise agreement is nonsense on passenger rights. To be fair, the big push from the commission was to extend the delays from 3 up to 4 hours, which made some sense, although, you know, I would say that, but given the ATC delays. but there was no reform on ATC, no reform on ET, no pullback on ETS, which the Europeans only are still paying, are the only ones paying. And the big win for the parliament is airlines must now advertise a fare that includes a second carry on bag. So, you now want us to advertise higher fares than the lower fares that are available out there, even though more than 50% of the passengers don’t bring a cabin bag. And that’s going to be the great win for our times. Putin has invaded Ukraine and Trump is bombing Iran all over the right to carry a second cabin bag on board aircraft. And our parliamentarians are absolutely obsessed with the passengers right to take a second bag on board an aircraft, even though they don’t do it. And other than that, there’s really nothing in it.
Eoghan Corry: Did the commission cave in, do you think?
Michael O’Leary: To be fair, they didn’t, because these lunatics wanted to put in the freedom of the passenger right to bring two carry on bags to the cabin bags on board the aircraft, despite the fact they don’t fit. So at least the commissiondefended that never mind on our aircraft. I mean, anybody who’s been on a Ryanair aircraft, knows there is no space in the overhead bins for any more bags. But the turbo prop aircraft Aer Lingus Regional aircraft, you barely fit one, you bring one carry-on bag. Most of those overhead, particularly where the wings are, don’t even have an overhead bin. So it’s nonsense, but it’s the typical kind of stupidity that you get out of the European parliament, you know. And they wasted nearly 5 months on this. I think it was the Cypriots wanted a deal they couldn’t come up with something, and this is the usual European compromise, but they come up with these stupid regulations that really are completelynonsensical. We have our lowest fares the lowest fares exclude a second carry on bag Now we’re not allowed to advertise those fares Now we have to advertise a higher fare. When more than half our passengers, the majority passengers don’t pay those fares. So only Europe would come up with this stupidity. Then we have Ursula Von her Leyen walking around, nodding on about the need for you to be more competitive, must be more competitive, and they do nothing. And this is their solution to Europe being more competitive. Let’s have the airlines advertise higher fares than are actually available in the system. What do you think the customers will do? They’ll buy the lower fares that are available in the system.
Eoghan Corry: The second bag airlines will define the size of that.
Michael O’Leary: To be fair, the Europeans already defined that the baggage definitions are agreed by the, the European Airlines in consultation with the commission. So the free carry on bag is the is the large kind of briefcase size bag. The second one is is the one that fits into the baggage sizer. The kind of, the, the traditional trolley The traditional trolley bag or the wheelie bag or that kind of nonsense. There’s no argument over the sizes of the bags. The problem is that we’re in airline with a 94% load tractor, almost every flight is full and everybody can’t bring a trolley bag on board those aircraft. Or one, you will have more queues at airport security around Europe, and 2, you’ll have huge delays, delays at boarding gates.
Eoghan Corry: So how’s that going to get resolved, Michael?
Michael O’Leary: It’s not, like the resolution is down there. The only resolution is there’s no change to what you can bring on board an aircraft. But the airlines now are not allowed to advertise a price unless that price includes the second bag, the trolley bag. So basically our lowest fare will now become the lowest fare including priority boarding. So we’re no longer allowed to advertise our lowest fares, but customers will continue to buy the lowest fares, because they won’t be bringing a second carry on bag on board.
Eoghan Corry: presumably you can advertise both and say this is the
Michael O’Leary: No. They’re saying now the European Commission in their wisdom on behalf of consumers are saying airlines must now can only advertise higher fares than are available in their system, but that higher fare will include the free second carry on bag
Eoghan Corry: And what’s to stop 189 people bringing their 10 K on board when there’s only 90 spaces?
Michael O’Leary: We won’t allow it. We will only allow up to 50%. We allow up to 50% people to buy the priority boarding fee. The other 50% aren’t allowed to buy it. Once the first 45% of passengers have bought priority boarding. They can’t, we, we don’t allow any more priority boarding. That’s how we limit the second carry on bag.
Eoghan Corry: And you’ll have to take bags off people at the gate then because they’ll all demand their right for the 10 K bag.
Michael O’Leary: No There’s no right to the 10K bag. So there’s no change to what passengers can bring on board aircraft. It is still one free per bag of personal item and then you have to pay extra to bring the second cabin bag. But what the commission and the parliament have now agreed is that the airline can only advertise that, the higher fare, which includes the priority boarding.
Eoghan Corry: The parents sitting with the children,
Michael O’Leary: in reality, it’ll mean almost nothing. What we currently have is There’s a €4 fee per seat, we won’t be able to charge the lowest fee, the €4 per seat. But if you want those seats, you’ll be sitting in rows 19, 20, 21, and 22. And more than half of parents with children want to sit somewhere else and they’ll continue to pay The parents will pay the reserve seat, but the, the children will be free.
Eoghan Corry: And the printed boarding pass, is that going to be an issue for Ryanair?
Michael O’Leary: We don’t think so. Again, more nonsense, you know, like we’re up to 99.9% of people now with a digital boarding pass. You will still have the right to go to the airport and print off a paper boarding pass. We think almost nobody will want the inconvenience of arriving at the airport and going to an airport check-in desk or take a desk to queue, to print off with the free boarding pass. so we think it’ll have no effect whatsoever.
Eoghan Corry: And the delays threshold is that a bigger problem than it is at the moment
Michael O’Leary: Yeah, I mean, that continues to be the main problem. Our biggest problem with the EU261 is still that air traffic control account for 90% of our flight delays and Yet we’re not allowed to recover our costs from air traffic control. The law says you can recover your costs from whoever caused the delay, but all of the national ATC monopolies are immune from prosecution. So, it’s the usual parliament and the commission have done nothing about the 2 real issues facing consumers and competitiveness, which is ATC delays This ETS tax on only entry EU flights while we exempt all the Americans, Russians, the non-Europeans landing and taking off in Europe.
Eoghan Corry: the bookings you were telling me last time, short bookings very strong. They further out ones, still weak. Are they still weak?
Michael O’Leary: Yep. Yep, still, that turned out in cheese. We’ll wait to see what happens in the Middle East. If there is a resolution there, which we hope there will be in the next couple of weeks, oil prices have come back significantly this week, but we need kind of passenger recovery or a bit of passenger confidence. But for the moment it continues to be strong closing, a little bit weaker further out.
Eoghan Corry: And your yields will be down away, but I think very good fares out there for even July, August.
Michael O’Leary: Yeah, I would think so. We thought originally fairs would be up 3 or 4% this summer, now we think it best, they’ll be flat.
