Usually what’s coming out of Michael O’Leary’s mouth isn’t something we want to hear (he once said he makes his pilots ‘engineer a bit of turbulence’ to increase drinks sales in flight), but his latest claim is music to our ears.
At the Airport Operators Association conference in London, O’Leary said that he has a vision of Ryanair offering free flights in the next 5 to 10 years. I know, we’re sceptical too. This is coming from a man who said he’d like to charge people to go to the loo and make passengers stand on flights.
O’Leary’s theory is that free flights will pack out his planes, allowing him to deliver millions of passengers to airports which will enjoy their custom in all the nice airport shops and eateries that we always spend far too much in. So Ryanair will be making ‘money out of sharing the airport revenues’. He said ‘The challenge for us in the future is to keep driving air fares down. I have this vision that in the next five to 10 years that the air fares on Ryanair will be free.'
It seems absurd for Ryanair’s flights to get any cheaper; one ticket including a checked bag averages at £39, but tickets can be purchased for as little as a penny. However, O’Leary has complained that Ryanair makes a significant loss on these flights, due to the current cost of Air Passenger Duty (a tax paid by every passenger flying out of the UK). Yeah, with Ryanair making a profit of £614 million last year, we’re feeling really sympathetic about his £13 per passenger costs…
In the last few years, the airline has focused on improving customer service and boosting its reputation, which is why we haven’t heard O’Leary come out with a trademark twattish statement in a while. And it seems we’re all as gullible as he thinks we are: Ryanair has been enjoying massive profits and an increased fleet size. Its website even boasts that 90% of its flights arrived on time in the last 12 months. Although we kind of think they add ten minutes to the arrival time just to make sure.
Free flights are something we can definitely get on board with (pun intended), but we don’t think we’ll be waiting a decade to book a boozy trip to Amsterdam, sorry Michael.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.