Let's ban the kiwis. My stupid business. Bloody brilliant

[ChicosBailBonds]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010607


My 'Stupid Business'
Europe's leading low-fare airline CEO has choice words for his competition, politicians, environmentalists and others.

BY KYLE WINGFIELD
Saturday, September 15, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

DUBLIN--There's a bit of P.T. Barnum in Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of Irish low-fare air carrier Ryanair. He's pulled such stunts as driving a tank to a competitor's headquarters to declare a price war and dressing up as the pope to promote new routes to Rome. Most recently, when Britain's Advertising Standards Authority said Ryanair was incorrectly claiming that its flights were faster and cheaper than the Eurostar train for traveling between London and Brussels, he sent the frowning officials a copy of "Mathematics for Dummies."

Along the way, he's built Ryanair into Europe's largest airline by passenger volume and, along with such rivals as easyJet, transformed travel on the Continent. From London or Dublin one can fly not just to Nice but to Nantes, not only to Rome but to Riga, and often for less than the price of a cab ride across town. A generation of Europeans has come of age expecting £1 flights to overlooked tourist gems hundreds of miles away--a phenomenon that arguably has done as much to aid European integration as the EU itself (though it says a great deal about the myopia in Brussels that Mr. O'Leary's efforts have often drawn regulatory scorn).

Speaking of eurocrats, Mr. O'Leary also seems to adhere to the belief famously misattributed to the master showman: There's a sucker born every minute. Regulators? "Useless." Environmentalists who complain about airlines' CO2 emissions? "Eco-nutters." Most of Ryanair's rivals? "Doomed." Mr. O'Leary has plenty more to say about all of these people and more, but the difference between him and other airline executives is as good a place to start as any.



Excerpted...the rest is in the article...it's great