Ryanair, Michael O'Leary on HardTalkBBC
 

Stephen Sackur talks to the CEO of Ryanair, Michael O'Leary, in Dublin on HardTalk on BBC WorldService.

Is this going to be a repeat of that big 30 min programme on the BBC (Panorama ?) in which MOL completely walked over the main interviewer and showed how good his media training was ?

Considering Sackur is neither a Paxman nor even remotely close to Andrew Neil the answer to your question is probably yes.

This was done a couple of years ago. It was very badly researched. The questions were trivial compared to what should have been asked. MOL batted them away with ease. There was no delving into the murky depths of behind the scenes and under the covers. The same was true of a press conference in Scandanavia. The reporters did not know what questions to ask and just scratched the surface of what we really want to know. It will be interesting to see if Hardtalk ask about the contractor issue. Considering all the flack Sports Direct has taken why is RYR left alone on this issue?

Contractor question.
 

"It will be interesting to see if Hardtalk ask about the contractor issue."


Stephen does ask about contractors.

Well, it is available on BBC iPlayer so I think I shall settle down and watch for a while.

First 10 minutes or so; Brexit. During this, he announced that none of 2017 new aircraft deliveries will be based in UK, whereas before the referendum he had planned on basing 12 here.
He was reminded that 12 years ago, following a meeting with the European Commission, he referred to that body as the Evil Empire.
Then there is Heathrow expansion. He maintains there should be a new runway at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted.
He acknowledged that Ryanair treated passengers poorly and should have addressed passenger complaints much sooner, referring to seat assignments etc.
Then came the recent issues with crew contracts, taxes etc.
He said the court case in France in which the French accused the crews of being actually based, and therefore working, in France and so should pay French taxes was rubbish. All his crews are working in Ireland and , according to him, the Irish government insists that all crews flying Irish registered aircraft are working in Ireland and therefore pay Irish taxes.
Re the tax row with Germany, he laid the blame squarely on the pilots, saying the pilots were working in Germany and so had their Irish taxes refunded and then failed to pay those taxes to the German government (which seemed to me to contradict his statement in the previous para).
The German pilots unions are, according to him, making false claims about pilots working conditions being unsafe. He said pilots work 18 hours per week and get paid up to 150,000 Euros per annum and there is a waiting list of 3,000 pilots wanting to join Ryanair and all complaints about pilots' working hours in Germany comes from Lufthansa pilots.
Finished off back with Brexit, Irish politics etc. Oh, and he is there until the end of 2018, unless the Ryanair board decide to offer him a new contract at that time. Quite dull really.

He said pilots work 18 hours per week and get paid up to 150,000 Euros per annum

And what was Sackur's response to this blatant BS?

Other than repeating claims by German pilots that Ryanair's contracts are pushing things back into the 18th century (I know, the aircraft back then were bloody awful), he just moved on to Brexit
What O'Leary actually said was to quote EU law, limiting pilots' working hours to 900 hours per year, therefore equivalent to 18 hours per week.

I thought that there was a recent EU ruling that if someone employed in one place was sent away on a contract (eg if a UK builder sends a team elsewhere), then their travel time at the beginning and end of each period of work was part of their working hours. So if MOL insists on employing his staff in Eire, then their travel time to and from France or Italy should be part of their work time. Anyone?

What O'Leary actually said was to quote EU law, limiting pilots' working hours to 900 hours per year, therefore equivalent to 18 hours per week.

If that was allowed to slide by, it is another case of an interviewer not knowing their subject. The response should have been "red herring MOL. Is it not 2000hrs WORK per year? With 4 weeks leave = 41.67hrs/week. And is unpaid SBY and travel time to/from base calculated into that 'working time?"

Regarding place of work and travel times etc., the contractors are employed by a Dublin based company. According to MOL they are working on Irish territory (inside the a/c), but I thought that had been thrown out by the French because they clocked ON/Off in the local crew room. Therefore their start & end place was local, not Irish. If MOL wants the crews to be Irish based, but reporting for duty in another country, then surely you are operating out of base and the travel time & costs are duty time and for RYR or your company? However, if your contract says you are XYZ based then how can it be claimed you are Ireland based? If you are Italian, living & based in Italy, why can you not have an Italian company? KISS anyone? Does RYR not have German based crews? I thought this issue had been tested with ez's dubious UK based contracts for local crews. Easyjet was then required to have all German based crews on locally taxed contracts. What's different here?

Guess it just needs testing with the authorities; one day.

RAT 5. Interesting. I was having some doubts while listening to him, along the lines of what you write here.
It seems the French authorities did indeed take him to court in Aix-en-Provence and he lost. He says he will appeal and laughed it off. However, I see he already lost an appeal in 2014, and was fined 8.1 Million Euros, so what exactly he was on about in this interview is puzzling. And adds weight to your argument about the interviewer not knowing his subject.

Sackur only had the first question to each situation - he did not have 2nd/3rd questions prepared so as to follow up. Consequently, MoL had no trouble batting all this away as he had all 'his' answers ready. He used the standard tactic of talking over the questions to repeat 'his' answer. He also got in lots of promotion for FR.

The questions about the Eire/Norther Ireland Border were easily dealt with and MoL was laid back throughout, did not even have to break into a brisk walk.

As I have said before, I do not like the way MoL does business but he is brilliant at what he does.

:yuk: obviously only counting block hours!

:}:{:{ yea if you are a TRE you might get that much gross, majority of FR pilots would be lucky to get half of that.

It was all standard stuff. Nothing unexpected from either side. A waste of time.