Here are just a few of the hashtags that sprouted up on Twitter as Ryanair’s flights fiasco exploded on the internet: #BoycottRyanair, #ryanairareshit, #IhateRyanair, #RyanairAreRubbish, #RyanairNightmare, #1stflightonRyanairneveragain, #RyanairFails, #goodbyeRyanair. I could probably fill this whole column with variations on the theme.
But you won’t say goodbye to Ryanair. You’ll fly it again – and the airline’s boss, Michael O’Leary, knows it. I was at his hastily arranged press conference in Dublin on Monday and, amid the multiple apologies, contrition and mea culpas, one statement revealed all you need to know. Asked if devastated customers would stop buying tickets in future, O’Leary almost choked. “Our booking engine is full of passengers who have sworn they will never fly with us again,” he proclaimed. He didn’t even think the current debacle ranked particularly highly among past cock-ups by the airline, although later in the week he may have changed his mind on that.
Aviation experts and City analysts appear to agree. “Even if those 400,000 don’t come back, it won’t knock them out,” said one, adding that he still expected Ryanair to continue its phenomenal rate of growth, adding 30 planes a year, which the analyst said was “like creating several new airlines for anyone else”.
So confident is O’Leary of recovering from this mess of his own making that he is not changing the airline’s full- and half-year profits guidance. Paying £20m in compensation is, relatively, peanuts for an airline the size of Ryanair.
Most consumer boycotts last as long as birds in a jet engine. When it first emerged that Amazon was avoiding tax on an industrial scale, there were widespread calls to boycott it. Five years ago the Guardian revealed how the retailer paid no corporation tax in 2011, prompting widespread revulsion and promises by many to never use it again. Five years on, what have its sales done? From what you can unpick from its labyrinthine accounts, UK sales at Amazon went from £3.3bn in 2011 to £4.3bn in 2013 to £5.3bn in 2014, and then £7.3bn last year. That boycott can’t be keeping Amazon boss Jeff Bezos awake at night.
The trouble with consumers is that we’re tarts. We protest, then when the next time comes round we still pick the cheapest. A few years ago Tesco was building a reputation as the ugly giant of the high street, with “Tesco towns” that it almost seemed to own. There were protests against new openings and calls for shoppers to support independent stores. But what did it for Tesco was not a rebellion by consumers but the arrival of Lidl and Aldi. They did the same as Tesco, just cheaper.
None of this is to excuse Ryanair’s behaviour this week or make light of the nightmare travellers have found themselves in. Ryanair’s PR mistake was to warn of cancellations that would affect 400,000 people, but not publish immediately the list of flights. That left 18 million customers across Europe worried they might be among them.
It has also emerged how far O’Leary has gone to infuriate not just his passengers but also his staff, with ghastly tales about how pilots are treated. At the same time the airline’s once leading punctuality is beginning to look like the infamously late 7.29am Brighton-London train.
Perhaps O’Leary’s hubris will turn to humiliation. While it won’t lose its licence in the way of Uber, fundamental reform of its employment practices is surely inevitable. But the most likely outcome is that much of the furore will be forgotten by Christmas. I fly regularly on the London-Dublin route and much prefer CityJet for its service and standards. But the cheapest fare on CityJet for my Christmas dates is £211; on Ryanair it’s £105. Like most people faced with such a huge price differential, I’ll probably be lining O’Leary’s pockets again.
