All language subtitles for Turbulence.The.Story.of.Ryanair.S01E01.1080p.RTE.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-DoRN_track3_[eng]

Did you really want to charge to
use toilets on Ryanair planes? Yes.

How do you rate pilots?
Pilots are glorified taxi drivers.

Is the customer always right?

No, the customer
is nearly always wrong.

(Laughter)

Ryanair dominates the European sky.

Valued at 30 billion euro, its
low-cost model has made travel

affordable for everyone.

It is the most extraordinary
commercial story in any country.

Yet, it's never far from controversy.

We've to leave for Portugal in 10
minutes, so as soon as that door

opens, grab your bags,
take your rubbish and fu...

They are crass, they're
rude, they're not nice to customers.

Fucking Ryanair.

They're expecting you to freak out,
they want you to have a meltdown.

Tony Ryan's Ryanair
had business class.

Our passengers
were really important to us.

Here's to Ryanair!

A brand we love to hate.

Ryanair is the only airline in the
world that flies you from no place

to no place.

Sorry about the delay,
we'll be blaming the Germans.

Led by, shall we say,
a polarising character.

That kind of
pugnacious, in-your-face denim.

He's quite forceful.

For fuck's sake, Duggan, compete!

He bullies people.

First thing he said
was, who the fuck are you?

Go back to where you came from.

He would call us
the ugly women brigade.

This is the story of how a brash,
scrappy Irish airline became a giant

in global aviation.

I will personally come up to
the boarding gate and kiss your...

I have a feeling Donald Trump
studied the Michael O'Leary story.

In 1997, Ryanair's new, cocksure
CEO brought the airline to the stock
market.

Michael O'Leary was confident in
securing 300 million punts in the

flotation, despite, only a few years
earlier, calling for the airline to

be shut down.

What led to that turnaround is a
story of vision, hubris, sharp elbows

and dogged accounting.

It starts with a tale of two Ryans.

Here's an early photograph
of dad, 1956, I believe.

My dad was from
Kilsheelan in County Tipperary.

A very proud Tipperary man,
as a lot of them seem to be.

He had ambitions, what
he wanted to do with his life.

He saw a job
advertisement for Aer Lingus.

He decided to jump on his
motorbike and travel to Shannon for

the interview.

He was successful
in getting the job.

On his first day, he met another
Tipperary man, a man by the name of
Tony Ryan.

Will you welcome please,
Tipperary's own Dr. Tony Ryan.

Sharing a home county and a
last name, Tony also had a fierce
ambition.

Where I was growing up in the
mid-50s, you had a couple of jobs to

go, you had the Air
Corps, ESB, Aer Lingus.

And if you got any one of
those, you felt you had made it.

The men joined the world of
aviation as clerks and soon became

close friends.

There's an early picture now from
1956, I think it is, with dad and

Tony back in their days in Shannon.

They're so young,
they're like 19, I'd say?

Dad was 19, I think Tony was 20.
Yeah, great picture.

They dressed like
pilots, really, didn't they?

Yeah.
Even the ground staff.

Yeah.

That's where a lifetime of
friendship, a lifetime of aviation

history kind of begins.

And that's the genesis
of the Ryanair story, really.

Tony Ryan's wedding
with dad as a groomsman.

Yeah, early 60s,
I think that was as well.

The top hats are great.

Dad was godfather to
Tony's second son, Declan.

They also ventured further afield
then to the United States, station

manager positions
in Chicago, in New York.

It was around that time that
an opportunity came for Tony Ryan.

At Aer Lingus, Tony Ryan hit on a
moneymaker that would change aviation

in Ireland forever.

The idea was simple,
renting idle airplanes to airlines.

This meant that airlines didn't
have the major capital expenditure

of buying an expensive aircraft.

He took that on,
but then he charged

expensively for
the annual rent.

And it turned out to
be an exceptionally

valuable business
and became very big

very, very quickly.

The new venture, Guinness Peat
Aviation, kept the old friends
together.

They were always in touch with each
other, even when they went their

separate ways, they always
seemed to come back together.

All the way through to Guinness Peat
Aviation, Tony actually requested

that dad come over
to help with the operation.

So that was an interesting time for
aviation, for the world, for him.

Millie, where did she go?

Now, here you go, Millie.

Here you go, Millie.

Millie!

So I was elected as the
youngest TD in the door in 1981.

I believe that I represent
a progressive modern Ireland.

I would have
taken over 400 flights

at that time
as a minister and TD.

Come on, Millie.

I haven't flown for 20 years,
I have a phobia about flying.

I get an absolute panic attack.

Over the last 40 years, I've had a
front row seat of Irish business and
government.

Ireland in the 80s was, let's face
it, somewhere you didn't want a front
row seat.

It was a very entrenched society,
which was still under the influence

of the Catholic Church.

We had deep social regulation,
no permissibility on divorce,

contraception, abortion,
all of that good stuff.

What does being a punk mean?

It just means being
different from everybody else.

Punk wants to
change society the way it is.

We don't like society the way it is.

Ireland in
the 1980s, we were

looking over
to the UK, we were

looking off to
America with very

rose-tinted
glasses, and we really

thought the best thing about
Ireland then was getting out of it.

Aviation was a
rich person's pursuit.

Dubliners used to
dress up in their

Sunday best to
come out to the

old terminal and watch
rich people getting on planes.

Chances were, if you were taking a
flight from Ireland, you were either

rich or emigrating.

The continuing flow of emigration
traffic forces many to despair.

It's a phenomenon now affecting
almost every family in the land.

Ireland's favourite export, young
people, left in their thousands.

My father encouraged me to join Aer
Lingus because he said it's the only

Irish company
at the time that's

really
looking outside Ireland.

And fortunately
enough, I was successful.

When it came to headhunting, only
the best would do for Tony Ryan's new
venture.

And one Christmas Eve, I was in the
Hibernian Hotel and I met Tony Ryan

and he asked me when I was coming to
work for them, the fledgling GPA,

and I said, Ah Tony,
you couldn't afford me.

Of course, that was red rag to
a bull because Tony felt he could

afford anything and
everybody, and sure enough, he did.

Tony's idea hit the jackpot.

He basically set up
the aircraft leasing business.

We were on planes out of Ireland,
marketing aircraft to airlines in

Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and
Jamaica and Brazil and wherever.

Profits for the GPA group
last year were over £100 million.

I often said that Tony, if he had
an idea while he was shaving in the

morning, wanted to have a press
release on the transaction out by
lunchtime.

I don't think there's any
written rule that people have to

work extraordinarily hard.

I think they do it
of their own volition.

They enjoy the challenge
and they get on with the job.

Is the feeling that they
will take additional airplanes?

They may not go to the full 37...

Tony's Monday morning meetings
were the stuff of corporate legend.

Tony could be remorseless if the
deal wasn't going well, wasn't going

to his expectations, wasn't
happening as quickly as he would

like it to happen.

At the end of the meeting,
there would be blood on the walls.

Not even Tony's old pal Christy
could escape the relentless pressure.

He decided that he needed to take
a bit of a break on his doctor's
advice.

He was burnt out, pretty much.

Aer Lingus, the legacy national
carrier since 1936, presented a

green-tinted vision of Ireland.

The Aer Lingus
brand, to me,

stands for prestige
and everything Irish.

So the whole marketing of Aer
Lingus, from the air hostesses right

across, was very
much the shamrock, the harp.

It was, as much as Guinness, as part
of Irish culture, Irish emblem on

the global stage.

In the 1980s, it wasn't clear-cut
that private enterprise was good,

that the consumer
should be looked after.

Sky-high prices
kept most of us grounded.

And that was at a time when a
Dublin-London flight could be 300
quid.

That would make it the equivalent
of a flight to Australia now.

Flying was for the elite.

The rest of us...

HORN BLAST

...got the ferry.

It's a pretty strong childhood
memory for many Irish people,

getting sick on
the boat to Holyhead.

Aer Lingus enjoyed wide-open
skies, unburdened by competition.

Aer Lingus, back in the 1980s,
just wanted the game to itself.

All traffic in and out of the island
was controlled by Aer Lingus, and

that's the way it liked it.

Over the years, many small ventures
often tried to get off the ground and

into the national carrier's airspace.

When competition came, it was
able to depend on the Department of

Transport to crush it.

The government was behoven to Aer
Lingus and it allowed Aer Lingus to

behave in an aggressive fashion.

Somebody had to come along
and state the case for the consumer.

After GPA, Christy ran Aer Arann,
a tiny island hopper in the west of
Ireland.

Dad's time at Aer Aran really got
the cogs turning in his mind with

possibilities and the potential
of establishing a new airline.

He wasn't alone in
spotting a need in the market.

Liam Lonergan was a visionary
in the Irish travel trade.

He had a vision of bringing
low-cost travel to the masses.

The men shared a vision
and Tony had the firepower.

He saw the opportunity, encouraged
by friends such as Christy Ryan and

Liam Lonergan to
set up a new airline.

I had three sons.

I wanted them to enjoy some of the
magic of aviation that I've enjoyed

over the years.

And I put up money for them.

They decided to split the company
up, 10% to my father for a £50,000

investment and then the other 90%
was going to be owned by Cathal and
Declan.

He put the ownership effectively
into a trust for his sons and they

were nominally the owners, whereas
everybody knew that it was Tony

Ryan's money that
was paying the bills.

You know, you invest some money,
whether it's to buy a farm for your

sons or whether it's to buy a Mickey
Mouse airline at the time for your
sons.

But what to call this new airline?

My dad and Tony and his two sons
were at Tony's house talking about

their new venture and they
started banding around a few names.

Shamrock Air, Emerald Air.

There was a Tipperary one.
Trans-Tipperary Express.

Trans-Tipperary Express,
doesn't really roll off the tongue.

And within earshot was Tony's
youngest son Shane and he pipes up

and says, there's three Ryans
sitting around the table, why not

call it Ryanair?

And they all thought this was a
great idea and that was how the

naming came about.

The first flight then was
set for the 8th of July, 1985.

This is at least the third statue in
the south of the country which is

supposed to have
moved in recent months.

The next item has caused us
considerable trouble this week.

The item is about lesbian nuns.

There are people watching this show
tonight who are firmly convinced

that if you came on you would have
horns sticking out of your heads.

Oh, you didn't notice?

This Ryanair camper van.

Great memories
of spending time in this.

We had the board meetings in
our dining room and people running
around.

Here's me in the
cockpit of the Bandeirante.

The old Bandeirante which
was Ryanair's first plane.

Engineers on the Bandeirante.

Seeing our family name pasted across
airplanes was incredible to us and

there was just a general feeling of
something really new and exciting
happening.

They chose Waterford for their
launch, appealing to local business

travellers looking to avoid
the long drive to Dublin airport.

Oh yeah.

So from 1st July, new
Waterford-London-Waterford service

will save you five hours.

So that's what they were really
promoting was the business aspect of

the airline.

Yeah, Ryanair, the London Express.

They were kind of trying to scoot
under the radar a little bit and not

come head to head
with Aer Lingus at the time.

Operating out of Waterford airport
was not in direct competition.

The Ryanair reservations book.
Yeah.

And the first flight.

Yeah.

So I love this.

People ringing up, buying a
ticket, paying their money and then

everything being kept
in the journal, basically.

8th of July '85.

For take-off, Ryanair needed a
licence to fly from the Department of

Transport and for the minister to
take a gamble on this Mickey Mouse
airline.

My father contacted the city manager
of Waterford and I think he was

nearly laughed out of the office.

The city manager said, look, secure
your licence first and then come

back to me, thinking that he
probably wasn't going to come back.

Never going to see him again.

So they needed a break.

My father, through his connections
then with Jim Mitchell, the Minister

for Transport, who he had known
working for Aer Arann, he actually

jumped in his car and he met Jim
Mitchell at half past ten in the

Ashling Hotel in Dublin.

Jim Mitchell
signed the licence papers.

My father drove back down to
Waterford and he was in the city

manager's office the next
morning and it was all systems go.

A party of VIPs, including the mayor
of Waterford, boarded the 15-seater

turboprop plane for the inaugural
flight of the new service, which is

being operated by the newly
established airline Ryanair.

July 1985, their first flight of 18
people from Waterford to Gatwick.

And that was pretty revolutionary.

I'm not sure many people even knew
when that first flight went out.

It would have been that little odd
little Irish company, Ryanair, which

is trying to make its name.

Once upon a time, flying was
rarefied, a spectator activity for
most.

I remember when I used to go out
with my mother on a Sunday, we'd go

out onto the
old terminal in the

airport and you'd
wait an hour and a

half before one
plane did land and

you'd be delighted to see one plane.

My parents were Cork, so I spent
a lot of my summers in West Cork.

My memory is of rain,
but I still enjoyed them.

In my childhood,
people didn't leave the country.

From 1970 almost to the
present day, I went to Drumkeady.

I did go to the Gaeltacht, and
very much enjoyed that as a child.

Tramore, Dunmore East, Duncannon, or
spending weeks in our grandparents.

I don't think we took
many holidays as a child.

We used to go
swimming off Bray Beach.

We mostly went to Donegal, and then
there was a trip to Tralee, which

was fantastic.

Living here in Connemara, so
it's like a holiday year round,

it's beautiful here.

Back in the day, foreign holidays
were beyond the reach of most Irish
people.

I think that's why a lot of people
were very surprised when Ryanair was
set up.

Who actually
would want a new airline?

What were the chances
of it actually succeeding?

The new airline had
a sharp incline to get airborne.

The airline, Ryanair, was his baby
at the very start, his third baby
after us.

He was so driven at the time.

Christy Ryan, as Managing Director
of the newly established Ryanair,

says that after just 2 weeks of
operation, they're getting twice as

many passengers as had been hoped.

It was all very small in a Brazilian
Bandeirante aircraft, and you can't

really make money on
a single aircraft airline.

When Ryanair started off, I mean,
they were a Mickey Mouse airline.

I joined in 1986.

I was just 17
at the time, and

nicknamed the
baby of the airline.

May the Lord be with all those who
travel and guide them in safety and
joy.

You had people who had never, ever
stepped foot in an airport, never

mind on an aircraft before, and
you'd turn around and they were

around the other side of the
aircraft, thought they went in where

the bags went in.

To make a profit meant expansion, so
they opened a Dublin to London route.

Because we were small, we knew our
customer by name, our passengers

were really important to us.

Anything over 2 hours,
you did the full meal service.

We did have a business class.

Here's to Ryanair.
Thank you very much.

Beautiful new aircraft.
Thank you very much.

My first flight with
Ryanair was a dream come true.

This was
something that

was new,
it was exciting.

The scrappy new
airline caught attention.

Today's announcement by Virgin
Atlantic is the latest salvo in the

airfares war.

People started to sit up and realise
that maybe, you know, we were being

taken for a ride for a
long, long time in terms of cost.

We met many celebrities
on the flights over the years.

Fatboy Slim, yeah,
great fun on those flights.

You were very proud to
wear the Ryanair uniform.

Rivals of Aer Lingus at the time,
it was the blue versus the green.

Ryanair, the only airline
with nothing going for it.

Have you noticed how more people
are flying Aer Lingus these days?

Is it because we offer a range
of low fares from as little as £57
return?

The legacy airline could no longer
ignore the new kid on the block.

Aer Lingus weren't tremendously
worried about Waterford.

What it didn't like was when Ryanair
started looking at some of the other

bigger airports that
Aer Lingus was entrenched in.

Ryanair were the first to break open
the champagne this morning for the

inaugural of their new route,
Dublin-Manchester, already served by

Aer Lingus.

It's the first time the two airlines
have been in direct competition.

Aer Lingus responded by operating
flights to Stansted, which in the

Ryanair growth plan,
Stansted was massively important.

To us.
And the new route.

Here's to Stansted.

We'll be waiting.

Stansted.

Aer Lingus undercut them.

Ryanair was in
the brink of collapse.

Cheap seats were a hit with the
public, but Ryanair failed to turn a
profit.

They had no idea
what the costs were.

There were bills arriving that they
had no idea where they came from.

It's worse than
£3 million, as has

been reported, and has
been worse than £3 million.

Tony had to put a lot
of his own money into Ryanair.

People have shown courage in terms
of changing the political culture.

The Minister for Transport broke
from the status quo and threw Ryanair

a lifeline.

He said, Aer Lingus, stay out of
Stansted, concentrate on Gatwick and
Heathrow.

Ryanair had a free run on Stansted.

So it's a very
big day for Irish

aviation, and
more importantly,

it's a very big day
for Irish tourism.

Seamus Brennan, as Minister for
Transport, probably deserves more

credit than anyone
else for the Ryanair story.

I believe what
Seamus Brennan did is

one of the most
important things

that was ever
done for social and

economic development
of our country.

It was a linchpin in helping
Ireland grow to the next stage.

Exclusive use from Ireland to
London's shiny new airport would give

the airline a
chance to establish growth.

Ryanair now had a flying shot.

Timofte against Bonner...

LOUD CHEER

The 90s was a time
of having wasted the 80s.

We started to get our act together.

I was elected by men and women of
all parties and none, and above all,

by the women of
Ireland, mna na hEireann.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

The nation holds its breath...

Yes, we're there!

The 1990s brought
something new to Ireland, optimism.

Tony Ryan's other aviation
story continued to rake in the cash.

And in the five years up to 1992, we
sold, I think, $5 billion worth of

aircraft to
investors in 32 countries.

Tony Ryan is one
of Ireland's richest men.

His Shannon-based aircraft leasing
company is worth an estimated $3
billion.

Tony had made a
lot of money from GPA.

He was quite a wealthy man.

Ryanair was really a plaything,
it was something he set up for his
three sons.

Tony wasn't coy about his success.

Tony was kind of
a grandeese, quite rarefied.

He was a generous donor to Irish
arts and culture and infused his pet

project, Ryanair,
with a touch of gold.

At the time, Ryanair sponsored the
Eurovision Song Contest and they

were sponsoring horse races when
they really didn't have the money to
do it.

Financially, I think
he didn't quite get it.

Tony needed a cash
influx for new planes.

Cocksure, he decided to bring his
golden touch to the stock market and

sell GPA shares.

He had made big commitments to the
purchase of aircraft and didn't have

enough money, so what he needed to
do was raise about £850 million, an

enormous sum of money,
billions in today's money.

In business, as in
life, timing is everything.

As I report to you, air attacks are
underway against military targets in
Iraq.

The outbreak of war in the
Gulf brought fuel prices sky high.

Aircraft leasing rates have dropped
by 20% in the past two years and

orders for new
planes have plummeted.

In addition, stock
markets are very weak.

I mean, the GPA IPO was...

Goldman Sachs told Tony that the
price is too high, you've got to

reduce it by $2 or
$3, and Tony refused.

The whole thing collapsed and it
was all pretty heart-rending at the
time.

Tony had gambled the house and lost.

With insurmountable debt, his
beloved GPA was in imminent danger.

The stock market flotation crashed
and burned and over the next year,

GPA more or less went with it.

This was your life's work to date.

Did you feel
devastated by the whole thing?

There must be a
stronger word than devastated.

Knocked off my ass, if
I may use a crudism like that.

But in life, you
have very few alternatives.

If you're knocked
down, you've two choices,

either stay down or get up
and, you say, dust yourself off.

Though Stansted had saved them
from collapse, Ryanair was still

under Tony's protection.

When the GPA IPO didn't succeed,
this would have affected Tony Ryan's

personal finances.

There was a bit of concern, would
the airline be able to continue?

It's not as easy to set up
an airline as one would think.

You have to go
through a certain process.

You have to test
out your management.

Tony had a great ability in hiring
fast and firing slow, and I always

felt he should
hire slow and fire fast.

Over the years, Ryanair had seen
management come and go, including one

of its founders.

He was kind of edged
further from the decision-making.

Your dad didn't stay at
Ryanair, when did he leave?

Yeah, I don't know if I want
to go into that, to be honest.

I mean, I'd love to get into it.

Can you get into
it in a tactful way?

Eventually, Christy Ryan bowed
out of Ryanair and he sold his
shareholding.

My father used to have an
expression, that the best deal goes

through the hottest fire.

You'll never have
character, my son, without pain.

Tonight, for the first time
publicly, the chief executive of the

company, Michael O'Leary, gives us
his thoughts on where the airline is
going.

As you will see, when it comes to
being a chief executive, he is not

your typical one, and actually
has a very individual style.

But it's not on Armani suits that
this young cork-born whiz kid spends

his fortune.

No, his standard dress for work
is blue jeans and check shirts.

That kind of pugnacious in-your-face
denim is the first thing you get.

You knew from the very get-go
that you were getting something that

wasn't your standard
chief executive material.

But we don't frankly care what
people do or what way they wear when

they come to work, as long as
when they're in work for Ryanair,

they're working hard for us.

Believe it or not, Michael was very,
very shy, found it hard to give any

of us eye contact.

♪ Where did you come from?
Where did you go?

♪ Where did you
come from, Cotton Eye Joe?

♪ If it hadn't
been for Cotton Eye Joe

♪ I'd been married
a long time ago...

Michael O'Leary is very much a
country boy turned country man.

O'Leary had earned his
stripes with Tony years before.

Michael O'Leary was working
in KPMG in the tax department.

So he was a sharp mathematical
accountancy brain and he was

entrepreneurial.

Tony Ryan was looking around.

He went to Michael O'Leary and
he says, will you work for me?

So he did.

Michael looked after Tony's vast
personal accounts, but with Ryanair

in the gutter, he was
sent in to assess the damage.

We were losing a lot of money.

Tony Ryan sent him in to
find out where was the hole.

It came about because the place was
going bankrupt and they couldn't get

anybody else to quit and be CFO, so
he was losing all of Ryan's money,

so I was sent in to stop the losses,
do whatever you want to stop the
losses.

He became the CFO and then
subsequently, in 1994, the CEO of
Ryanair.

Tony liked people
with initiative and strength.

Dublin Airport is
our most expensive airport.

This is a point
we have repeatedly made.

We knew if Tony had requested for
Michael to come in and assess things

that, you know, this
guy knew what he was doing.

When he went into Ryanair, he went
in on a deal that he would get 25%

of the profits of anything
above £2 million at the time.

O'Leary applied his accountancy brain
and came to only one conclusion.

Michael O'Leary advised
Tony Ryan to close it down.

Close down the airline,
it's not going to work.

Tony said, it is
not going to close down.

I want it to make money.

Tony Ryan exploded.

Now, he didn't have any solutions as
to how they were going to save the

business, but he told them, probably
because of pride, that you're not

going to sell it.

But Tony Ryan was not for turning.

A solution had to be found.

In order to help Ryanair survive,
the business model had to change.

They needed a success
story to draw inspiration from.

Tony used to go to these airline
meetings, and he became very

friendly with Herb Kelleher.

If you're embarrassed to fly the
airline with the fewest customer

complaints in the country,
Southwest will give you this bag.

If, on the other hand, Southwest is
your kind of airline, we'll still

give you this bag.

For all the money
you'll save flying with us.

Southwest Airlines
was very much a disruptor.

Low-cost carrier,
single aircraft,

and under
represented airports.

Tony sent Michael to Texas to spend
time with his friend Herb Kelleher to

see what he could learn.

O'Leary came back
speaking, he had seen the future.

Tony, if this thing is going
to work, it's got to be low-cost.

We've got to
shave everything we can.

O'Leary now had control of the
scissors, and he started to cut.

He was absolutely
stringent on reducing every cost.

You know the stories about Michael
not allowing people to charge their

phones in the office, telling
people to steal pens from hotels.

He was just into that sort of
level of detail of low, low cost.

And that's where Michael
really was different from Tony.

Tony Ryan used to fly around on
Concorde, and he had this vision

that you could fly around
on Concorde but charge 10 euro

airfares, which was insane.

And so he wanted it very
stylish and elegant, but cheap.

Tony's aunt was travelling on a
flight with Ryanair, and Tony sent

Michael a note, would you ever
please see that she gets a drink?

And Michael took Tony's note and
wrote on the bottom, send three

pounds, and sent
the note back to Tony.

No prisoners taken.

Michael had a vision, and we could
see that he was looking to change
things.

Just an incredible ball of energy.

He's like a bullet, he's like
the roadrunner through the office.

Michael O'Leary turned
that energy into cutting costs.

Ryanair entered a new era of
efficiency that would rattle both

competition and passengers.

We did invite Michael O'Leary himself
to partake in interview for this.

I'm going to need
my glasses to read this.

(Chuckles)

"Dear Aisling, thank you for
your letter dated 7th of July.

While I wish you every
success with your documentary,

I have no interest in participating
in documentaries about Ryanair or

our changing
national self-perception."

"It sounds far too much like pulling
wool out of our collective navels

while watching paint dry."

"In Ryanair, we prefer to look
forward rather than look back."

"I therefore hope you'll
understand if I politely decline."

"Michael O'Leary, Group CEO."

I got one of those letters myself
when I was writing biography of him

back in 2017.

And he wished me Godspeed.

By the mid-1990s, the
O'Leary effect had fully taken hold.

He was cutting
costs and buying planes.

I was working at Manchester Airport
and I was looking at some numbers

and this Irish
airline, Ryanair, was

starting to
do remarkable things.

Michael O'Leary came and told me
how little they wanted to fly to
Manchester.

However, if we made them
an offer, they might consider it.

Michael's unique negotiating style
made Ryanair stand out like a sore
thumb.

I was dealing with about 40
airlines from across the world.

Ryanair were quite the most
demanding, obnoxious, belligerent

new airline that we'd ever
had the misfortune to deal with.

Every deal felt Michael's squeeze.

Now, why should a £59 fare from
Dublin to London be any different

just because a group of travel
agents said they're going to boycott
us?

It's not a good enough reason.

If I was to describe someone
as "no-shit Sherlock", it would be

Michael O'Leary.

But Tim was not going
to take this tactic lightly.

Ryanair weren't paying their bills,
had had a massive row with his

finance director.

If you don't pay your bills, you'll
pay the same price as everybody
else's.

There was some
surprise at that approach.

How dare I speak to them like that?

So it was a total surprise when
Michael said, would I like to join

the Ryanair team?

Nothing could have made me less
want to work for Ryanair than the

experience I'd had
in the previous six months.

Being in Ryanair, there's
always an extra layer to negotiate.

When people say
it's a final offer,

it's never
a final offer.

There's always haggling to be done
and nothing is ever off the table.

Anyway, we came to an agreement and
so I did go and work for Ryanair.

Hundreds of East Germans have
come over in the last four hours.

Many say they've
never seen West Berlin.

In the decades since Ryanair's
first flight, Europe had come to see

dramatic social changes.

The newly formed European
Union opened borders and created
opportunity.

Europe has been massive for us.

Irish politician, Peter
Sutherland, freed the European sky

from restrictive travel regulations.

Peter was very keen on getting rid
of all the monopolies in European
aviation.

Which effectively meant that
in any country there had to be a

competitive position.

He was very much pushing
the policy of the world opening up.

The open skies, the deregulation,
the enlargement of Europe which gave

you a whole lot
more countries to go into.

The race for the European sky was on.

To expand, Michael
needed cash and lots of it.

To raise that, they
had to try to sell shares.

But the ghost of
GPA's failure lingered.

He made it clear to Tony Ryan, you
cannot be the chairman of Ryanair

when it goes to the stock market
because you're associated with a
failure.

And that's when they brought David
Bonderman, who was a famous American

investor in, as
chairman of the company.

Ryanair needed a trusted titan
of industry to act as chaperone to

Michael's Wall Street debut.

Michael at the time was
expanding the airline, he was making

it profitable, he was making
Ryanair into a real success.

And obviously David saw that.

David was impressed and liked the
aggression of Michael and he came

along with it.

Ireland's pace of change
is now bewilderingly fast.

We grow more complex by the day.

Well, after months of speculation,
Ryanair has finally announced its

plans to float on the Dublin
and New York stock exchanges.

We plan principally to use it to pay
the debt we currently have and the

balance will be used to enable us
to buy six more aircraft this year.

The expression that was heard very
often was, it's got to get away.

When the Ryanair flotation was
coming up, everybody in the company

knew about it for the simple reason
that everybody in the company was

getting shares.

One of the carrots at the time when
you were joining the company was

that you received shares.

I'm confident we have
a very good story to sell.

We have a group of very committed
management and staff, all of us

working to make Ryanair a success
over the next four or five years.

This was going to be the real
catalyst to allow the airline to

really expand.

Michael said, we're doing this.

Expectations were high.

After 12 years of scraping, fighting
and elbowing its way into the market,

Ryanair was facing the
biggest test of its viability yet.

On the day, there
was great excitement.

For everybody in the company,
there was something at stake.

Watching the share price from the
sort of bottom left-hand corner of

the graph at the opening of trading.

The sharp rise in value of Ryanair
shares within minutes of opening

caught even the most
optimistic by surprise.

While analysts expected the
shares to trade at a premium, no one

expected the immediate
premium to be so much.

And the flotation
was an overwhelming success.

And so we finished up with a lot of
people in the company probably had

made enough to buy a car.

Ryanair's value has jumped from £307
million this morning to £390 million

this afternoon.

Tony Ryan and his family saw the
value of their 35% stake go from

£100 million to £132 million, and
all in the space of just 10 minutes.

While one Ryan family
celebrated, another commiserated.

Many years before, under a
gentleman's agreement, Christy had

handed back his shares to raise
cash for the fledgling operation.

My father missed Ryanair an
awful lot when he left the airline.

Michael O'Leary has written to me
personally and said success has many

fathers, and
definitely I agree with him.

To not really see the fruits of his
labour, you know, years down the

line, it's tinged with sadness.

Christy Ryan died in 2007 with no
connection to the airline he helped
start.

So for me, it's just a great legacy
and we're just so proud to be part
of it.

I didn't want to cry.

No longer a scrappy disruptor,
Ryanair was becoming a main player.

Once the IPO had happened, they
could start buying new aircraft.

And so they could go along with
the cash in hand and Michael's

negotiating ability
to Boeing and to Airbus.

There was plans at the
time to purchase Airbus A320s.

I got a great photograph standing
in front of an Airbus engine.

He had signed a letter of
intent with Airbus on a Friday.

Champagne had
been drunk in Toulouse.

He sent a letter of intent off to
Boeing over the weekend and said,

if you match this by Monday
morning, I'll go with you.

Boeing matched.

The deal was an order
of 45 new 737s for $2 billion.

I know that Airbus were very
unhappy, but that's the way business
is.

From Tony, he would have learned the
aggressive style, not taking no for

an answer and just do it, get out
and do it and don't hang around.

Michael's a predator.

If he can't go through
you, he'll go around you.

If I can draw an analogy between
a wildlife documentary where the

wildebeest are drinking quietly
at the lake and then the crocodile

bursts out and grabs one of
the wildebeest, drags them to an

untimely death, while the other
wildebeests swish their tails and

walk quietly off,
saying, thank God it wasn't me.

Well, that was not dissimilar
to a Monday morning meeting.

Sometimes you got it
and sometimes you didn't.

Now, with a single fleet of
737s, Michael could fully realise the

vision of the Southwest model.

The 737 was by far the most
successful short-haul airliner in
the world.

The thinking behind having
a common fleet is very simple.

If you have more than one type of
aeroplane, you have to hold spares

for them, you have to have different
training, the pilots can't fly both,

so you have to have
a different set of pilots.

Having one fleet
is just pure efficiency.

Michael implemented a feat of
operational brilliance that has

become industry standard in European
short-haul, the 25-minute turnaround.

At the time, the standard would
have been 45 minutes to an hour for

short-haul, and we cut it down
to 40 minutes and then to 35, and

eventually down to 25.

Planes on the ground cost
money, planes in the air make money.

When you hear Michael talk about it,
he just looks at it like it's a bus

going from A to B, how
can I get most bums on seats?

How can I do it at least cost
with the quickest turnaround time?

The 25-minute turnaround.

When the plane lands, and what they
call taxi to the gate, once it's at

the gate, it takes 25 minutes
to take passengers off, to put

passengers on, taxi back out to
the runway, and off you go again.

There wasn't time to have a cup of
tea or a coffee on the turnaround.

You had to be more
efficient, be better prepared.

If that was repeated three and
four times a day, an extra pair of

flights could be operated each day.

Increase plane
use, increase profit.

The only pitfall, if you care about
that kind of thing, is the customer
experience.

When you are boarded, you're
boarded at a really fast pace, the

crew ushering you on, getting you
through as fast as you can, being

quite assertive, quite pushy.

But the second you get through the
gate, you're all standing on the
stairs.

And you're
wondering, what's going on here?

They've literally just made us run
and sweat, and now we're standing in

the stairs.

But as you do that, you're
seeing people walk off the plane.

The next step then, they bring you
on to the tarmac, where you stop
again.

Sometimes it could be
raining, it's windy and it's cold.

People don't realise you're part of
the operational process, which means

that your tickets are cheaper
because of this waltz that you're

doing with the airline.

You know, you may
not have the best

user experience,
but you've got a

really
low-cost flight.

The 25-minute turnaround became
central to everything Ryanair did.

We see most of our growth, certainly
next year and maybe the year after,

coming on these successful new
routes from London into continental
Europe.

Europe was always on the agenda.

The two big markets
were Paris and Brussels.

Charles de Gaulle was the centre of
Air France's world and wasn't going

to cut
any sort of deal

with the
likes of Ryanair.

The level of disinterest shown
by Orly reinforced the notion that

there wasn't going to be
the welcome mat shown in Europe.

It was kind of us
against the rest of the world.

Unable to wedge into established
airports, Ryanair deployed another

Southwest model strategy
and identified small airfields.

None of us knew where Beauvais
was, that Charleroi even existed.

The fact that Paris was about 75km
from Beauvais Airport mattered not.

You were flying to Paris,
which, of course, you were.

Just not Paris as you
might have imagined it to be.

Ryanair is the only airline in the
world that flies you from no place

to no place.

Is Stansted a London airport?

You're nearly in
Norwich, for God's sake.

It's widely known at the moment
we've been talking to airports in

Germany, in
Scandinavia and in Italy.

The first Copenhagen airport
it flew to wasn't even in Denmark.

It was in Sweden.

You're only paying goddamn nine
euros for it, what do you expect?

On the very first day of Ryanair's
service to Paris, Aer Lingus took

out a full-paid advert which read,
Aer Lingus will take you to Paris

with a picture of the Eiffel
Tower and Arc de Triomphe, not

thereabouts, and a picture of a
haystack and a pitchfork in it.

If nobody knew about Ryanair's
service to Paris starting that day,

by God they did by the time Aer
Lingus had done all our marketing
for us.

I think we put together
a superb management team.

I also think we put together an
extraordinary bunch of young Irish

people, 600 of them, who work very
hard and just love doing what they
do.

Tony Ryan and Michael
O'Leary fought, like cat and dog.

Tony, while he wanted Ryanair to be
a low-cost airline, he also wanted

to be sort of a nice airline.

Michael O'Leary brought that
absolute direct cutting through all
opposition.

That probably led to a little bit
more conflict than there should have

been between the two men.

And we got to a stage in Ryanair
where it was Michael O'Leary who

made the decisions, not Tony Ryan.

Michael had taken the vision of the
men before him and executed it beyond

their wildest expectations.

It's not a boom that we're
experiencing, it's a boom that

Ryanair has created.

Ryanair's growth was exponential.

By the end of the 1990s, they
were now flying 5 million passengers

annually and had increased
profits to 43 million punts.

He looked at all the numbers,
he'd say, how the hell can you fly

somebody for a tenner
or 20 euro or whatever?

But he just manages to do it.

I don't know how
he does it, but he does.

Given the huge job that Michael
had done in changing us into an

efficient low-cost carrier, we were
quite confident that we would be

able to take on
anybody and beat them.

Ryanair soared, confident in
its power to overcome any and all

challenges ahead.

It is the most extraordinary
commercial story in any country.

Our shares have had a
very good run, we're up 18%.

They are crass, they're rude,
they're not nice to customers.

Is the customer always right?

No, the customer
is nearly always wrong.

He really doesn't care
who he upsets or who he hurts.

If I were you, I'd go back to
where you came from, I'd go back to
Connemara.

Why Ryanair did its utmost
to put off people, I don't know.

You paid 1 euro 50 for this
flight, what do you think this is,

the Orient Express?

Dark patterns are practices that are
seen to be deceptive and misleading
to users.

The World Trade Centre attacks on
9-11 brought aviation to a halt.

Michael O'Leary arrived in Seattle.

It was certainly one of
the best deals in history.

Yet, it's fair to say Ryanair is
fairly litigious, he says, shifting

in his seat.

Nobody looks like they're enjoying
themselves more than Michael O'Leary

in these pictures.

Aviation is probably one of the
fastest ways you can burn fossil

fuels and
Michael O'Leary knows this.

You're on record as saying emissions
are a load of bollocks talked up by

sandal-wearing Greens.

I've a feeling Donald Trump
studied the Michael O'Leary story.

Trump got elected by
being an arrogant little brat.

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