In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen - Michael O’Leary CEO of Ryanair

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

In this episode, Nicolai Tangen talks to Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair. Check out the episode and learn about the secret sauce to Ryanair’s success, and find out if they ever tried to buy Norwegian?The production team on this episode were PLAN-B’s Martin Oftedal and Olav Haraldsen Roen. Background research were done by Sigurd Brekke with additional input from our portfolio manager Venetia Baden-Powell.Links:Watch the episode on YouTube: Norges Bank Investment Management - YouTubeWant to learn more about the fund? The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)Follow Nicolai Tangen on LinkedIn: Nicolai Tangen | LinkedInFollow NBIM on LinkedIn: Norges Bank Investment Management: Administrator for bedriftsside | LinkedInFollow NBIM on Instagram: Explore Norges Bank Investment Management on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi everyone, and welcome to our podcast, In Good Company. I'm Nikolaj Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Southern Wealth Fund, and I'm your host today. In this podcast, I talk to the leaders of the largest companies we are invested in, so that you can learn what we own and meet these impressive leaders. Today, I'm talking to the CEO of Ryanair, the one and only Michael O'Leary. Michael has been in charge of Ryanair since 1994. He's transformed the company from a loss-making startup to one of the most valuable airlines in the world with more than 150 million flights yearly and up to 3,000 flights daily. Michael is a one-of-a-kind leader,

so you don't want to miss this one. He's also, by the way, one of the funniest people I've ever met. So tune in. you don't want to miss this one. He's also, by the way, one of the funniest people I've ever met. So tune in. Michael, very welcome to Oslo. It's great to have you here. It's a great pleasure to be here, particularly on such a sunny day in Oslo. Absolutely. Michael, you probably don't remember this, but 23 years ago, you sent me a letter, which I framed and put on the wall. Because in this letter, this was just after I had received some kind of award for being some kind of best fund manager or whatever. I beat

my boss. And you sent a letter and suggested that our salaries should be adjusted accordingly. And I thought it was such a cool letter so do you write a lot of letters i do generally speaking to fund managers but usually of them asking why they're not investing in europe's leading low-cost airline how many letters do you write a week you think oh i'd say probably at least 10 a day 10 a day yeah now most of my letters are generally to airports government tourism ministers these days, less so to fund managers. But we're always trying to push the Ryanair brand and our growth story.

And what do you tell the airports? I tell the airports that you need to lower your costs. There is huge growth available out there, particularly in a post-COVID recovery period. And that Ryanair, with over 150 new aircraft deliveries over the next four years, is the only airline in Europe that can deliver you that remarkable growth. So, for instance, an airport like Stansted, how many letters do you think you've written them?

Oh, I write lines. Stansted probably gets a letter about once a week. Now, it's a great pleasure to welcome you here to Oslo, and you are actually coming over physically. Why is it important for you to meet physically? I always like, I mean, A, because we've had two years of god-awful computer meetings and Skype meetings and all that horrible stuff. And it's great to be back on the roadshow physically meeting investors. We've had very good half-year results. And so we have eight teams on the road meeting investors, fund managers. And it's also nice to get out and also meet people.

Now, you started off as a pretty humble farmer boy in Ireland. That's me. Exactly. Still a humble farmer boy in Ireland. It's just the farm got bigger over the years. It's pretty big, that farm now. But tell us about that travel. I grew up on a farm.

My parents, I was very fortunate. They sent me to a very good school in Ireland, but run by the Jesuits, who teach you, who pretend to be humble, but teach their students humility and hard work went to work in KPM went to Trinity College in Dublin went to KPMG hated accountancy started to went out on my own buying and selling small businesses news agents at that stage and then started working for the Ryan family who at the time were one of the wealthiest families in Ireland and had set up the aircraft leasing business.

They'd made so much money in the aircraft leasing business, they decided to do something philanthropic and give it all back. And to do that, they set up a low-cost airline in Ireland back in the early 1980s, which rapidly lost as much money as they were making in aircraft leasing. Right. How do you think your upbringing is kind of impacting the person you are today? think it's critical i think you grow up on a farm uh pretty early you learn the value of hard work you also learn responsibility animals have to be fed at weekends

you can take breaks and go on holidays but you know you always have to make arrangements and i think it's a very nice way of growing up and I've been fortunate enough to as I said expand the size of the farm so I'm now married with four children teenagers and teenagers more than any other organism in the known world need a responsibility and farm work more than any other organism I know yeah and so how do you treat them then I think we treat them ridiculously well much better than I was treated when I was a teenager, but they keep pointing out to me that that was the last century, Dad. But they're good kids.

But, you know, they all have ponies, dogs. We breed horses, we breed cattle, and we have tillage, and they take responsibility. In fact, my eldest is now doing as one of his subjects for his school exams, agricultural science. Why are the Irish so obsessed about horses? Because it's one of the few things we're actually genuinely good at. Other than that,

we're making it up as we go along. And we have a long history of breeding horses, racing horses. You know, we come and we are a Viking stock

and the Vikings were good at two things, sorry, probably three things, but two things that are illegal these days. One was shipping and the other one was horses. They're not allowed to rape and pillage anymore.

And I think we inherited that from our Viking ancestors. And it's something, we have natural conditions. The farms in Ireland, you know, we don't have very level land. So you generally breed cattle and horses because we're not big enough or rich enough to do tillage. But talking about being young, I mean, you were 27 or 28 when you became the CFO or Ryanair how did that come about? Well it came about because the place was going bankrupt

and they couldn't get anybody else to go in and be CFO so it was losing all the Ryan's money so I was sent in to stop the losses do whatever you want to stop the losses and the Ryans were incorrigible optimists so they wanted to have a Tony Ryan who was very wealthy at the time used to fly around on Concorde and he had had this vision, which was insane, that you could fly around on Concorde but charge 10 euro airfares. And so he wanted it very stylish and elegant, but cheap. But cheap, it was right, but it was never stylish and elegant. I went and studied with him. We went and looked at Herb Keller, who was running Southwest Airlines in the States at the time.

And you could realize that actually it could be cheap, but had to be very efficient it couldn't wouldn't always be elegant but you piled it high and sell it cheap and you commoditize certainly short haul air travel and rhiner has been doing that in europe for the last 25 years through four recessions gulf wars icelandic volcanoes and the formula continues to work spectacularly. What's been the critical decisions that you made in Ryanair which has made it so successful? Critical decisions were to follow the Southwest formula, have one fleet, one airline. So Southwest is an American successful low-cost airline, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's the largest airline in the States. It dominates the domestic market in the States. They have a fleet of about 750 aircraft. They carry about 150 million passengers a year. And it has been, by some spectacular lengths, the profitable most successful airline in the u.s for the last 30 years and we have copied some of their model all one aircraft type we're all boeing 737 although it can equally succeed with airbuses but it has to be you have to you have to the patience then to wait until boeing are desperate for order so you buy aircraft cheap. You go to secondary airports when you're building the model.

We started here in Oslo and Torp, although we're increasingly, we now have three new routes in Gardamoen. And you turn the airplane around quickly, 25 minutes, which means we save about three hours on six flights every day, which gives us enough time with the same pilots, the same aircraft to operate two more flights per day. And the great joy of deregulation and liberalization in the airline industry is on short haul flights around Europe and in North America,

there is no business class anymore. Nobody will pay a premium for a short one or two hour flight. And that means it's commoditized. So we have taken the kind of supermarket of the IKEA philosophy and applied it to the airline industry, which means we are by some considerable distance, the lowest cost lowest fare and most on-time airline in Europe. So when you look at what you've done what are you the most

proud of? I think what we're most proud of is kind of transforming air travel in Europe some would say for the worst I say for the best we've democratized and made I mean air travel is now affordable for everybody when I grew up in Ireland in the 60s ands, we couldn't afford to fly to get off the island. Everybody went by ferry. Now, everybody in Europe, nobody under the age of 40 in Europe, they all expect to travel across Europe and can do for 40, 50, 60 euros one-way airfares. And in case if you're patient, you can do it for 19 and 29 euro airfares with Rhiner. And I think we're most proud of, if you like, that democratizing air travel, removing it from being

the privilege of the rich and making it affordable for everybody. You don't spend a lot of advertising, but instead you have some pretty famous public statements which have drawn

a lot of attention. You've been quite successful there. Yeah, I mean, we didn't have money for advertising because we were going broke when I joined it in 1986. And at that stage,

I copied the likes of Richard Branson and it was, know just generate noise PR so we did ridiculous things all in the interest of generating cheap PR we ran ads poking fun at priests the Pope the Queen Prince Charles we but have you stopped doing it now we have kind of grown up a bit or I think we've stopped I mean you know the world has changed we've stopped doing it now? Have you kind of grown up a bit? I think we've stopped. I mean, the world has changed. We've stopped doing that kind of outrageous PR because we're now, we are the biggest airline in Europe.

We have a fleet of 600 aircraft. And, you know, safety, we don't want to be that kind of deliberately antagonistic. But the world has changed. What we have done, what has changed now in the last 10 years is we have ludicrous, and I know nothing about it, but we have social media teams on TikTok and Twitter and all that stuff. We are by far and away, I think, one of the biggest corporates on TikTok.

And they produce all of this, to my mind, mind-numbingly idiotic 15-second videos, but they're very popular. But we just filmed one, you and I, right? Yeah, yeah. So that's pretty cool. It is, but, you know, we're just two old guys on TikTok. I know, I know, I'm not on TikTok, but hey. What do you think about airports? I think airports are a business model that needs to change.

They have, you know, They are gradually weaning themselves off, being these expensive marble glass palaces where they sell duty-free at ridiculously discounted prices and believe they should charge people for the right to enter a park and enter their facilities. I think airports need to change in the next 10 years and will become much more like shopping malls, where, in actual fact, it should be free to get you through.

People should move freely through the shopping mall, but spend money at the restaurants and at the... And that creates huge opportunities for airports to lower the charges to the airlines and to passengers to move through the facility. Airports seem to think that they've a God-given right to spend ludicrous amounts of money on marble and glass go to some national regulator or government that allows them some

ridiculous return on that ludicrously wasteful expenditure and charge airlines and passengers very high fees in open norway is a good example it's about 25 28 euros per passenger just to get to access the shopping centre. And then the government's levy of tax on top. And so what do you think about the Norwegian airport? Torp, I think, is a very good airport. It's owned by one of my business heroes, Olaf Thorn, who I think is a genius and brilliant and I really enjoy meeting him.

So Olaf Thorn is nearly 100 years old, I think. He's 99. I hope I'm as fit and I was I hope I'm as fit and healthy and rich as he is when I get to 99 but I have a long way to go and only 38 years to get there. So during the pandemic most of the airlines laid off people but you didn't do that so what was the thinking behind that? Thinking behind it is just another crisis to be managed I mean look though COVID has been the most existential crisis faced by the airline industry. I mean, even I thought arrogantly and wrongly that this could never go wrong. We've been through the Icelandic volcanoes, 9-11, the Gulf War.

We've never not flown more than 95% of our planned capacity for the next 12 months. We hedge oil 12 months out at 90% because we're always going to use 90% of our oil. And here came COVID and all of a sudden the business, we were grounded for two years. So you didn't lay off people because you didn't think it was very serious in the beginning?

No, we didn't lay off people. One, because we had a very strong balance sheet going into it. And two, because we knew there is going to be a very strong recovery. And the critical thing in a recovery would be to keep your pilots and your cabin crew not just employed, but current. We have to fly a pilot, each aircraft, each pilot, each cabin crew once a month.

And in some cases during COVID, we were sending a plane up once a month with 150 pilots and cabin crew on it so that we could keep all their licenses current. We benefited, but you had to have a strong balance sheet and lots of cash to be able to make those brave decisions. We also, this time last year, hired over 1,000 new pilots and we were hiring and training 3,000 new cabin crew. hired over a thousand new pilots and two we were hiring and training 3 000 new cabin crew even as omicron uh which emerged on the 20 in the last week of last november crushed christmas and then everybody thought the recovery was coming and putin invades ukraine and it crushed easter we kept going and so we were the only airline in april may that had all of our 73 new aircraft all of our pilots all of our cabin crew ready to go when this dramatic recovery took place. People have been locked up for two years and they couldn't wait to go back flying.

And we have seen this summer, we've operated about 115% of our pre-COVID capacity and captured huge amounts of market share in countries all over Europe. So you basically came out of the pandemic like a rocket. And do you think the pandemic will have any lasting consequences? Yes, the pandemic is, certainly in Europeanan air travel has totally transformed the marketplace as we come out of the pandemic i think you're going to there has been significant consolidation huge airlines like thomas cook norwegian for example has totally restructured it's emerged out of the covid pandemic about 30 percent the size it was going into the pandemic flyby has gone bust um alitalia has reduced its fleet by 60 percent tap in portugal has cut the fleet by 40 percent and into all of

those markets ryanair expanded this year what's the end what's the end game here in the next three years europe is going to consolidate much like america did 10 years ago into four very large airlines you will have three large connecting carriers which will be led by lufthansa air france ba and one very large very low cost very low fare point connecting carriers which will be led by Lufthansa, Air France, BA and one very large, very low cost, very low fare point-to-point carrier,

Ryanair, and we will dominate the industry in Europe. In the next two or three years... What about the other low cost airlines? Well, there aren't any, but the other middle cost airlines,

if you look at it at the moment, Alitalia... Well, Wizz claim to have low cost, right? They claim to be on time as well, but I wouldn't make too much attention to what they claim. Alitalia will get sold

to either Lufthansa or Air France in the next 12 months. TAP will be sold because they have to repay huge state aid to probably IAG, Iberia, BA, and that really only leaves EasyJet and Wizz.

EasyJet, I believe, will be sold to, will be bought or acquired or merged with either Air France or BA because they have a very big strategic position at Paris airports or at Gatwick. And that leaves only Wizz outstanding. Wizz are no longer making money. They've lost huge amounts of money in the last two years.

They are pivoting away from competing with Ryanair in Europe by seeking new operations in the Middle East. So they're focusing on growth in Dubai and in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, which is a good sensible strategy, because if you can't compete with Ryanair, you better get out of the way. Did you try to buy Norwegian? No, we wouldn't take a present of Norwegian.

You wouldn't take it for free? No. What about the other Norwegian airlines? Well, the only other ones I know, I know of Fleur, and, you know, while we wish them well, I'm afraid it's chronically loss-making and we'll never... I mean, it is very difficult to be a Norwegian or a Swedish airline

as the results of both SAS and Norwegian have demonstrated. Norwegian, if long-haul low-cost was ever going to work, Norwegian would have been hugely profitable. But long-haul low-cost doesn't work. Why? The long-haul market is different for two reasons.

One, quick turnarounds make no difference. You're still only... If you turn a plane around in 25 minutes or in three hours, you can still only fly two flights a day across the Atlantic. And there is, in short haul in Europe or in North America, business class premium travel is gone. We've blown it up. No business people want to go and sit in a business lounge at 6.30 in the morning

drinking champagne. They want to show up at the airport 25 minutes before departure, get on the plane and get to their destination. On long haul, 20% of the marketplace will pay a ludicrous premium for business and first class travel and movies and flight lat beds and so that they can go into a business lounge and they will not move out of jfk or a heathrow or oslo gardermoen or copenhagen and so the marketplace on long haul is different. On short haul, 25 minute turnarounds gives you two extra flights per day per aircraft. And that means that if Norwegian or SAS operates six flights a day, we do eight with the same aircraft and the same crews. We're already 33% more efficient, never mind all the other cost savings.

And no passenger will pay you a premium for a business class seat on an intra-European flight. Do you think competition is fun? I think competition is great. I think competition is great. I think competition is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Really? Yeah. Why is it so much fun? Because it's the reason we get up in the morning.

I think it's natural in the human instinct. You know, my children, you know, your children are four or five. The first thing they want to do is race each other. You put them in a pool, they want to have races against each other. Yeah, but you're not four or five anymore. No, but it forms part of the same thing i mean we i operate an industry which is chronically loss making but is gradually moving towards i think stability and profitability but there's been enormous competition and we i mean you look at rhiner's growth over the last

20 years we've been competing with state subsidized state-owned monopolies who can't touch us what's the most fun competitive moment you've had? In our industry, it's absolutely without doubt. It is doing aircraft deals at opportune timings with Boeing or with Airbus. I mean, all of our aircraft orders have been placed during moments of great crisis. So when do you buy your planes? We buy our planes when there is a crisis. We generally have a very strong balance sheet. Today, we have 4.7 billion in cash coming out of COVID

because we went into COVID with about 3.5 billion in cash. We placed our first order after 9-11, 25 aircraft, and it was the making of Ryanair. And ever since then, we have also placed orders after the Gulf War, after the financial crash in 2007, 2007, 2009. We placed two huge bets. We ordered over 400 aircraft in two different orders in 2009 i think in 2011 and what did you do during covid what we did actually what we did was we had huge aircraft orders boeing were in trouble because the max had been grounded for

two years we renegotiated the price of the existing aircraft deals i mean when we got a very significant discount from boeing on what were already very lowly priced aircraft. So what we did is we went back and we renegotiated the order, but we increased the size of the order. So during COVID, we increased our order book from 150 to 210 aircraft, reduced the price. And lo and behold, as we emerge out of COVID now, airports all over Europe are looking for a return, a traffic recovery and growth. And we're the only airline in Europe that's taking delivery of 200 aircraft over the next five, four year and a half year period that can deliver that growth. But why don't other airlines do the same?

Is it because they haven't got any cash? Well, mainly because they're all run by pilots. And then pilots want to go off and buy shiny new toys when all is good. And I'm like a farmer, you know, my farming heritage in Ireland, we know we have to get through the winter. So we have to make money in the summer, sell the cattle, sell the crops. We hunker down for the winter.

And then we hope always we can buy cheaply in the winter when other farmers are selling crops and cattle. And we treat aircraft the same way. Hunker down and wait for the crisis. The one great thing about the airline industry, we know it is capital intensive, cyclical. We are always three or four years away for the same way. Hunker down and wait for the crisis. The one great thing about the airline industry, we know it is capital intensive, cyclical. We are always three or four years away for the next crisis. So as long as you build cash, you don't have to wait long for the next crisis to

come along. Moving on to the climate. Is it good news for the climate that you fly people to Estonia for 10 euros? Yes. We take them off flying Lufthansa or Baltic Air, who charge them about 200 euros, and they reduce their carbon footprint by 50% by switching to right. They wouldn't fly. They wouldn't spend 200 euros. So you're creating traffic, right? Actually, we are creating traffic.

But I mean, tourism in Estonia, tourism in Ireland, tourism in Portugal needs that in ireland tourism in portugal needs that low cost what we've got to do people will still fly there's no way of turning that clock back remember flying in you in the eu accounts for two percent of you suit co2 emissions so you can argue actually given that road transport accounts for 27 percent of europe co2 emissions by converting the flying to estonia as opposed to driving to Estonia we're significantly reducing their carbon footprint. I haven't got any particular plans on driving to Estonia. A lot of Estonians

that's what they do. The Poles think nothing of driving 24 hours across the European continent. We need to convert them to flying but flying on greener, cleaner aircraft and then at much lower airfares so that actually tourism and the great interesting thing about tourism gets a lot of criticism,

but tourism is one of those industries that creates jobs and employment, particularly for entry-level young people in the regions of Europe, in Eastern Europe, in Southern Italy, in the Greek islands. How do you make aviation more sustainable? Well, at the moment, new technology. The new technology engines are incredible at what they're able to do in terms of reducing fuel consumption. I mean, I'm a selfish accountant. I want to reduce fuel consumption because it's my largest cost.

But you can have reduced costs and be more energy efficient and sustainable the same way. Moving on to copaculture. Yep. What is the copaculture in Rhinair like? I think it is very open. We have a very small management team. I mean, the senior management team in Rhinair is is only 10 people the wider management team is only 40 people we have only three layers of management between me and somebody doing check-in at dublin we try to be very open i

go up and lord i go up and pull boarding gates i load bags the rest of the management do too and we try to be open and have an open culture. When you say three layers, what would the equivalent of BA be? I'd say 55 layers. I know in Lufthansa, for example, Lufthansa was a huge organisation. We'll carry this year 168 million passengers, but we employ only 17,000 people. Lufthansa will carry this year about 130 million passengers, but they employ about 130,000 people. So they employ... So nearly 10 times more. 10 times more.

You know, but that German, this myth of German efficiency, you know, doesn't, isn't all that it's made out to be. But we have, we're unionised, we were non-union up until 2017. We have very good relations with our unions. We've worked through COVID very well with them. We've negotiated pay agreements.

We've negotiated pay restorations. We have a very open culture. We communicate across people. We have an internal app for our employees, free travel app, news and information app. So we're always trying to be very open and transparent. Some people would say, you know, I mean, we work hard and I expect people to work hard.

We pay well, above uh industry averages uh cabin crew are paid in ireland across ireland the uk between 25 and 45 000 euros which is uh almost double what hospitality and retail get paid and that's important are people proud to work for a runner no i don't think they are i think people are secretly proud to work for ryanair the problem for r Ryanair is an awful lot of the PR stuff I've done in recent years makes Ryanair almost a target of criticism. So people are out for a meal and restaurant. Where do you work? I work at the airport. If you say you work for Ryanair, oh, you delayed my flight or you're terrible. O'Leary's a terrible tosser. That's changing, though, this summer. We've been the most reliable airline with the only year it't cancelled, and the image is changing.

And I think people are proud to work for Ryanair. When did you start to become a good guy? When did you start to become friendly? Oh, probably never. I mean, I've always been a rogue. But I mean, and it's unfair because I'm such a rogue. I think a lot of very good people who work with us and deliver brilliant service get kind of caught up in my PR.

But I think increasingly we're regarded as being very professional i mean within the industry riders regard as being super professional we've been at this for 37 years very high standards very high operating standards very high safety standards but you started you started to treat passengers in a much more friendly way a little while back yeah i mean i think we made a big song and dance over many years mainly to generate cheap pr we were talking about taking out seats and standing room only and we charge you to use the toilet and you know and i still get asked about when when do you start in charge you'll be able to use the toilets absolutely answer is never but some of that sticks and a lot of what we did for cheap pr sticks but i think one

of the things we did irritate a lot of people too when we had the in 2016 2017 we'd taken it too far you know we we had free seating and that caused people an awful lot of stress because there were huge queues at the airports because they wanted to get on and make sure they got the front seats we've changed all those policies we set up a customer panel about three years ago that now meets four times a year we had really good feedback from them we still do things mainly online and on the app that irritates people and we need that direct feedback from our customers. Moving on to leadership. What is your approach to leadership?

I think to be brave, to be out there, to take responsibility. When we screw up, I go out and take responsibility. But also to be open and recognize that I am repeatedly wrong. Far too many companies, chief executives, get caught up in this. I am always right. Everything I say is a pearl of wisdom. I start from the basis, I'm always wrong.

It's great having four teenage children because they frequently tell me, probably on a daily basis, how I'm always wrong. But you have to be humble in this business. We make lots of decisions. We try lots of things, but we don't get wedded to it.

We move back out of it very quickly. And when we know we're doing something wrong we stop and we change it which leaders do you admire leaders i admire currently uh pep guardiola who manages my beloved manchester city football team all of thawne i admire hugely up here in norway manchester city uh yeah well no yeah yeah you know that you know they have a norwegian player on there i have we've been the best team in europe for about the last 10 years but we couldn't score as a city? Well, no, yeah. You know they have a Norwegian player on there. I have. We've been the best team in Europe for about the last 10 years

but we couldn't score goals and now we have bought a very young Norwegian and he's brilliant. Why do you think he's good? I think he's good because he's so professional.

You know, it's very difficult, I think, for a very talented young footballer at the age of 20 to get lost in booze and girls

and all the distractions and yet he comes seems to come from a very good family his father was you know and I don't think was a mid-level successful Norwegian footballer but he was mid-level talent his mother was a kind of a I think a heptathlete he's brilliantly I mean he's born to play football and score goals but he seems to manage himself very well. And that's the challenge in professional football today. There's lots of talented young footballers coming through. But if you can avoid the ills of drink and drugs and girl, I don't mean that in a bad way.

But to be professional and be dedicated, and I think that's what I admire most about that. He's a 20-year-old. I admire Guardiola because he's very professional, very dedicated and almost obsessive. And I admire Olaf Thorn up here because he's now 99 years old. You know, what I admire most about Olaf Thorn is he's one of the richest men in Norway, but he's incredibly humble.

He has a very simple lifestyle. And he keeps doing 99 years later. People, I mean, I'm 61, say, when are you going to retire? I say, why do I want to retire? I want to keep working. It's better to wear away rather than rust away. Why is humor important? Humor, I think, is the way we puncture our own stupidity.

I like humor. I'm probably a bit wacky anyway. And it's very important when people get pompous that you puncture that with humor. I like Monty Python. My favorite movie of all time is The Life of Brian, which punctures brilliantly the Bible. It was great, and I know it off by heart because the movie was banned by the Catholic Church in Ireland when I was in college in 1979 to 1983. But you could show the movie if you had an art club and it was all done. So I went through four years in Trinity

and almost twice a week we went to see The life of brian because it was being put on by every different college club to raise money or to get membership where it is and it is you look at it now it is spectacularly prescient the way it poked fun at the bible and all of that kind of particularly and if you're growing up in ireland in the 70s and 80s in the catholic church around the country the The life of Brian was just one of the great humorous puncturing of religious, biblical, and many other holy cows, and long may humor continue to poke fun at holy cows. Now, you've been CEO for 28 years. Yeah.

That's quite an achievement. What keeps you going? I enjoy the industry. I enjoy the work. I'm reasonably well paid, and I'm a large shareholder in Reiner. I own 4% of the company, so I am wedded to hopefully continuing to see it grow and thrive. And then my children will waste all the wealth that I have created in the next generation, or hopefully they'll go and do something useful with it.

The CEO of Goldman Sachs, who was on the podcast recently, said that if you are happy two-thirds of the time, that's good enough. I think that's a bit optimistic. I think if you're happy half the time, that's a pretty good batting average. I mean, I've been very fortunate. I have, you know, I've been reasonably successful. I, you know, I have been reasonably rich. I don't have economic worries, but I'm married. I have four children who are teenagers. I worry more about my children now probably than

I worry about the future of Ryanair. But life should be full of challenges. The reason to get up out of bed in the morning is because there's a philosophical challenge, whether it's a business challenge, an economic challenge, or my daughter was in a school play, school musical, The Lion King, two weeks ago. These things, challenges are sent to motivate us. And, you know, I want to lose probably a stone of weight in the next year. We have to have a reason to get up out of bed. I think the worst...

What's the key to raise happy kids? I think a very good and understanding wife who will make up for my personality flows uh and then you know not to spoil them you know make them work make them i mean we're very much parents all my children are very active in in school and in sports we don't have a wii machine in the house the only thing that we have to deny them is we do not have a playstation we will not have a wii in the house the only thing that we have to deny them is we do not have a Playstation, we do not have a Wii in the house, if you want to engage in sport, go outside and run, cycle

play rugby, swim and we will drive you ridiculous distances to do all that and then try to be balanced, we expect you to work hard in school and we expect you to work hard but you choose what you want to do and then you need a bit of luck all families are dealing with,

there's drugs in the schools and in every society in Europe. Now we have a lot of young people listening to the podcast. What is your advice to young people? My advice to young people is, one, be optimistic. The future is in your hands

and don't listen to the naysayers. In every generation, you've had somebody in the marketplace going the end of the world isn't i i have never been more optimistic for the future but you have you face huge challenges we didn't have you deal with social media ridiculously young ages you deal with drugs or ridiculously i saw my first drug when i was going in trinity i was 21 and you know they were the drug addicts in those days were layabouts and wasters. But there's a very bright future out there.

But you must work for it. You got to work hard. You are must work hard. You must be productive. You must challenge yourself, whether it's in sports or it's in your professional life or in your studies. Be optimistic, work hard. And then I would say, go to college, get a good education and go and change the world. Be ambitious for yourself, for for your family for your future because ambition is what drives humankind and ambition is what will

transform the world in the next millennium in the way ambitious people have transformed the last millennium well that's a great place to end big thanks for coming on the podcast and a big thanks for coming all the way to oslo to do it in person always my pleasure to come to oslo particularly to meet with norsh who are a very small shareholder in Ryanair, but I hope to persuade you to become a much bigger shareholder in Ryanair into the future. Very good.

Thank you so much. Thank you.