What's an appropriate salary for being a notorious public wankstain?

Michael O’Leary is the head of Ryanair, one of the richest men in Ireland, and loves nothing more than seeing his own name in the papers. The main job he does for his company is making ridiculous public statements about what cheapskates Ryanair are, like that they might start charging you to use the toilet in flight, or that they’ll have a “fat tax” for larger passengers.

The reason he does this is to make everyone who reads his wacky ideas think “Fucking hell, Ryanair are cheapskate bastards.” Although maybe this will mean you hate him and his company, you will associate it in your mind with cheapness, and check their site first when you’re going away. His whole public persona is built around basically saying to people “I am a total dick, and YOU FUCKING LOVE IT.” He calls it his “dog and pony show.”

It isn’t just an act though. He actually is a knobhead. Although he likes to paint himself as some kind of champion of the common man, but he attended Clongowes public school, described as “the Eton of Ireland.” He’s tried to completely ban trade unions from representing Ryanair staff – the Irish union Impact say they have 270 outstanding cases of victimising and bullying. Staff have to pay for their own uniforms, training and meals, and office staff have to supply their own pens and are banned from charging their phones at work. He wants total deregulation of the airline industry, meaning your safety at 40,000 feet is in the hands of total free market gangsters – he described the British Airports Authority as “overcharging rapists.”

It’s not just staff he bullies as well – in 2002 a woman who won free flights for life as Ryanair’s millionth customer was awarded €67,500 damages after a judge found she’d been abused and bullied when she tried to complain that she’d started being charged again.

On top of all this he’s also a climate change denier, a position that makes quite a lot of sense for the head of a rapidly expanding airline. “Do I believe there is global warming? No, I believe it’s all a load of bullshit,” he said. Scientists argue there is global warming because they wouldn’t get half of the funding they get now if it turns out to be completely bogus. It’s horsehit.” Yes Michael, it makes total sense for scientists to make up something that runs counter to the interests of almost everyone with money, and who would have a vested interest in influencing research. Scientists give factual scientific opinions, not ones tailored to suit an agenda like you do.

In 2004 he bought a taxi license for his private Mercedes so he could drive it through Dublin bus lanes. As he put it to one interviewer: “I don’t give a shite if nobody likes me.”

His latest brainwave really takes the biscuit though. Last week he went on record saying Ryanair might get rid of co-pilots. Instead he said, if anything happens to the pilot a member of cabin crew can take over because “computers do most of the flying now.”

This may be a step too far for Ryanair passengers. The idea of sitting in a giant metal box a couple of miles in a sky that’s being controlled someone who’s training mainly covers flogging smokeless cigarettes and scratch cards. But Michael tried to re-assure us with the claim “”In 25 years with over about 10m flights, we’ve had one pilot who suffered a heart attack in flight and he landed the plane.”

Not Hogwarts, but Clongowes, the incredibly posh public school where O'Leary went

Which, unsurprisingly, turns out to be TOTAL BOLLOCKS. In a response letter to the Financial Times, Capt. Evan Cullen, President of the Irish Airline Pilot’s Association, spoke up on behalf of the pilot in question’s family, who were quite upset by O’Leary’s claims. The reason they were upset is because the guy in question did actually die. He didn’t get proper help from the cabin crew quickly enough because Ryanair hadn’t trained them in what to do if the pilot was incapacitated (I bet they’ll train them to LAND A PLANE th0ugh.) When doctors finally made it to the cockpit they declared the pilot clinically dead. They managed to revive him after “strenuous effort” but he later died. It may shock you to learn this guy did not land the plane, on account of being dead.

More importantly, what the incident in question does illustrate is the absolute necessity of co-pilots. Although the pilot was clinically dead, the plane landed safely because it had a co-pilot who was able to take over. There is a reason that when you go up in the sky you have a back-up in case anything goes wrong with the main person keeping you all from crashing into the ground.

As Capt. Cullen put it, in dead pan style, “That he [O'Leary] is prepared to make such statements while, apparently, not being fully briefed on these important safety matters is entirely consistent with Ryanair’s ‘innovative’ approach to staff relations, safety, pilot fatigue and related matters.”

But in an even better response, a senior Ryanair pilot came up with another suggestion to help the company save money. Capt. Morgan Fischer, who’s head of pilot training for the company, wrote:

“I would propose that Ryanair replace the chief executive with a probationary cabin crew member currently earning about €13,200 (£11,000) net a year. Ryanair would benefit by saving millions of euros in salary, benefits and stock options. Further, there will be no need to petition either Boeing or governmental aviation regulators for approval to replace the CEO with a cabin crew member; as such approval would not be required.”

We think this is a great idea, although we think that even then cabin crew/CEOs could be perhaps at least be paid a living wage. We’d much rather they were doing his job, which essentially involves being an arse in public on a regular basis, than flying planes. Straight off the bat this would save €241,000 in his salary, not to mention all the other money he rakes in from the company. It’s reckoned that he’s worth about €300 million, but nobody is sure. As he put it himself: “Money used to be my motivation. You always want to make the first million. Then you get to £10m and you think about £100m. But somewhere in the middle – do not ask me where – you stop worrying about money.” What a knob.

We doubt his cabin crew, existing on about £11,000 a year, have stopped worrying about money. Although we’ve been slagging the idea of cabin crew being made into pilots, that doesn’t mean we should disrespect the vital job they do, protecting people’s safety and making sure everything is ok in the body of the plane. The fact that on a Ryanair flight the main thing they have to do is sell stuff to you is an indictment of the company, not them, and they deserve Michael O’Leary’s millions much more than he ever will.

The Others are shocked by the consequences of Michael O’Leary’s penny pinching.