Michael O’Leary: «Ryanair flights are too cheap». Is the era of low cost over?

He was the pioneer of low cost: the Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, with flights at low, indeed very low prices, has revolutionized the world of travel. With consequences of various kinds: true, with low cost, travel has become democratic and accessible, but it has also turned into a hit and run activity.

The world has become more attainable, but it has also often been experienced in a more mundane and repetitive way. This until yesterday. Because O’Leary’s announcement, amidst strikes and canceled flights due to lack of staff and skyrocketing diesel prices, is about to give a new direction to low cost and consequently, also to our holidays: it’s true – says the CEO, used to blunt announcements – «I created the low cost ones, and I made a lot of money, but in the end I don’t think the travel industry is sustainable in the medium term at an average rate of € 40 per ticket.. It is too cheap. But I think it will still be cheap and accessible even € 50 or € 60 ». A price that, compared to Ryanair flights that start from € 9.99 each way, could be even 5-6 times higher. Not a little.

“It is too cheap for what it is – continues O’Leary – I find it absurd, every time I fly to Stansted airport, that the train journey to central London is more expensive than the plane ticket,” he told the Financial Times, adding a comment about how dramatic Brexit has been (“a disaster” and “the height of idiocy” in his words) which does not allow airlines to hire European workers, accentuating the problems in finding staff.

Certainly O’Leary’s considerations go in a direction of the market and also of the planet. The use and abuse of flights in the skies of the planet represents an important source of pollution: air traffic is responsible worldwide for about 7% of the climatic effects caused by man and it is precisely short-haul flights that are the most pollutants.

Source: Vanity Fair

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