O’Leary and Cruz *

Sharing a stage at World Travel Market (well nearly) were Michael O’Leary, still in charge of Ryanair after 30 years, and Alex Cruz, involved with air travel nearly as long but best known as a short-lived BA Chief Executive.

With BTN regular contributor John Strickland as host, O’Leary appeared in video form, noting that he was doing the investors round following the announcement of a profit of €225m ($260m) for the three months to the end of September, marking its first quarterly positive financial news since the final three months of 2019.

But the Dublin-based airline said that it expected a loss of between €100m and €200m for the financial year that ends on 31 March 2022, a downgrade from its July forecast “somewhere between a small loss and breakeven," citing fare discounting and higher fuel costs.

Whilst he explored his usual tactics of doom and gloom for every other airline, and predicted the fall of ITA (ex-Alitalia) he made his concept for the future the main theme of his presentation.  In his view, comparing Europe and the USA, each has three major carriers.  Across the pond American, Delta and United with Southwest the dominant low-cost carrier.  JetBlue was ignored, the airline something of a hybrid.  None of the audience had any problems with that.

With regard to Europe he expected the big three, International Airlines Group (IAG), Lufthansa Group, Air France/KLM to stay on course, and easyJet and Wizz Air to be sucked into the larger carriers.  “One big budget airline will be left and that will be Ryanair.”

As for Cruz he was largely noncommittal saying that he was in close touch with senior staff at British Airways.  “I am enjoying life as a consultant!”

The theme of his discourse was airlines and their technology interface, pointing out that Ryanair’s reservation system was 20 years out of date.

“Airline IT platforms are basically very old. Most at the heart of airlines are, at best, 10 to 15 years old and, at worst, over 50 years old – there are very few exceptions to that. We live in a world of fare classes, six digit PNRs and complex threads of connections between these airlines.

“Thousands of software plasters, band-aids have been added over time, which are managed by a convoluted mix of internal and external partners. It’s no wonder that light cyber-attacks bring those software to their knees.”

Cruz says that while the pandemic has “turbocharged or digitalized and increased our expectations of providers,” airlines cannot live up to digital expectations.

www.jlsconsulting.co.uk

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Mavis Grant, London

It’s fine having Cruz and O’Leary on show but what about British Airways