Recent
moves at City of Derry Airport prove that Michael O'Leary rules, if
not Ireland, Britain and a chunk of the rest of Europe, then
significant aeronautical hectares
of them.
Michael
O'Leary is Mr. Ryan Air, CEO of the airline company that carries huge
numbers of passengers for leisure, business, family and other
pursuits. It is a hugely profitable business, worth way beyond its
simple function of flying people from one place to another at a
price.
Simply
by moving some flights to Belfast and hinting publicly and, no doubt
privately to certain key individuals, that Ryan Air might vacate City
of Derry Airport, Michael O'Leary has triggered action, which means
the release of public funds, from governments in Belfast and London,
with an alacrity that outpaces the fleet wonders of Usain Bolt.
Governments in Brussels - though Brexit-spancilled at present - and
Dublin - always troika-bound - eagerly await developments.
He
has previous form in this area. Some years ago, he secured an
extension of the runways at City of Derry Airport, again at huge
public cost and at considerable pain for families who were removed
from their homes and farms to facilitate the extensions. Now Ryan Air
is on the point of pulling out of the airport.
Or
is it?
Might
the promised new money be enough to convince Michael O' Leary that
Ryan Air can continue to profit from City of Derry Airport?
Attempts
to get a Derry-Belfast motorway built, to speed up train times
between the cities, to secure and expand a university in Derry, to
provide appropriate responses to the needs of cancer patients in
Derry have all failed to raise the necessary money from government,
despite sterling efforts by many hard-working and intelligent people.
How are they failing where Michael O' Leary succeeds?
Ryan
Air is a dynamic and successful corporate business. It excites heated
responses, both pro and con, from users, competitors, governments and
regulators.
What
is it that Michael O'Leary and Ryan Air have, by way of leverage with
governments, that others don't? The answer seems simply to be: jets.
And
jets, or rather, not having them, terrifies people and requires
financial responses that do not bear the cost-benefit scrutiny that
other business proposals bear.
Michael
O' Leary and Ryan Air's business model uses fear and vanity,
convenience, high-volumes/low-costs, as well as the linkage between
jets, modernity and progress to deliver a full-fronted assertion of
the current model of capitalism, where public investment and
cost-bearing, via
tax and rate payers, are used to transfer money into corporate hands,
to secure their continuing presence and their profits. In this case,
City of Derry Airport makes annual losses of two millions pounds
sterling. Ryan Air makes year on year profits.
BBC
Radio Foyle, the station local
to
City of Derry Airport, has been assiduously covering recent
developments, airing all the arguments in favour of the airport's
existence, including
the
necessity for the subvention from rate-payers and governments, as
well as the counter arguments which invariably seem weak and vaguely
unpatriotic. One constant note is that the airport and the flight
connections are vital as inducements
to investors from overseas, who will
bring employment
to the city and region. The station recently carried an interview
with a US digital-business head, who said he'd been to Derry, loved
the
city
and managed to play some golf there, on
his way to a conference in Belfast.
He sounded dead-on. What he didn't sound like was someone about to
open a factory in Derry any time soon, certainly not with the
Usain
Bolt-like alacrity Michael
O' Leary and Ryan Air can command in their dealings
with governments.
The
link between the airport and foreign direct investment (FDI) is
trumpeted and difficult to fathom. It is as deep, dark and mysterious
as a holy well, all of which feeds into the magic of Michael O' Leary
and Ryan Air. Assertions are made and evidence is not called for.
This is the mumbo-jumbo end of business development, where fear,
vanity, ideology and hubris rule over cost-benefit analysis.
The
current responses from governments in Belfast and London, generated
by the prospect – threat? - that Ryan Air will pull out of City of
Derry Airport leads to the ironic possibility that Ryan Air will
re-bid for the Derry-London route, benefiting from the enhanced
public money on offer. It would be a brazen and effective use of
public money for corporate gain, underlining the truth that Michael
O'Leary and Ryan Air rule.
OK?
For
a sense of the Ryan Air experience, here
is a short extract from Michael Cronin’s essay on the new service
industry capitalism, “The Meaning of Ryanair” as it appeared in
Dublin Review of Books.
Stupefaction
comes early. Booking a ticket on the website is like dealing with a
snickering ticket tout ever alert to the foibles of the gullible or
the inattentive. The future passenger is forever on guard against a
kind of digital cute-hoorism so that she does not end up with a
Samsonite suitcase she never wanted, travel insurance she never asked
for and a car she never intended hiring. Concealed in the thicket of
drop down menus are the pass keys out of the labyrinth of algorithmic
disorientation and the pop-up messages are video game villains which
must be swatted down if the future passenger is to arrive safely at
the destination of payment, where more inexplicable charges await the
unwary. Being charged for the privilege of printing your own boarding
pass is perhaps one of the most inexplicable. This version of paying
others for work you do is at the heart of the present moment of
market capitalism, where low cost increasingly means, to the producer
at least, no cost.
Michael
O'Leary Rules!
Still okay?
www.facebook.com/DaveDugganWriter
www.drb.ie
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