Michael O'Leary Quotes

The unions need to be taken on. British Airways is massively over-staffed and has got to get its costs down ... The problem for [chief executive] Willie Walsh is that the board of BA has no spine, no balls and no vision.

I'm here with Howard Millar and Michael Cawley, our two deputy chief executives. But they're presently making love in the gentleman's toilets, such is their excitement at today's results.

The most influential person in Europe in the last 20 to 30 years has been Margaret Thatcher. Without her we'd all be living in some French bloody unemployed republic.

She's coming here with Aer Lingus.

We want to annoy the whenever we can. The best thing we can do with environmentalists is shoot them.

Do we carry rich people on our flights? Yes, I flew on one this morning and I'm very rich.

Anyone who thinks Ryanair flights are some sort of bastion of sanctity where you can contemplate your navel is wrong. We already bombard you with as many in-flight announcements and trolleys as we can. Anyone who looks like sleeping, we wake them up to sell them things.

One of the weaknesses of the company now is it is a bit cheap and cheerful and overly nasty, and that reflects my personality.

Code-sharing, alliances, and connections are all about "how do we screw the poor customer for more money?"

The European Union spends most of its time either suing me, torturing me, criticizing me or condemning me for lowering the cost of air travel all over Europe.

The chattering bloody classes, or what I call the liberal Guardian readers, they're all buying SUVs to drive around London. I smile at these loons who drive their SUVs down to Sainsbury's and buy kiwi fruit from New Zealand. They're flown in from New Zealand for Christ sakes. They're the equivalent of environmental nuclear bombs!

We need more people to go into business and fewer wasting our lives becoming bureaucrats and civil servants.

Air transport is just a glorified bus operation.

The police force were outstanding in their field. But all they did was stand in their field. They kept passengers on board while they played with a suspect package for two and three quarter hours. Extraordinary.

All flights are fuelled with Leprechaun wee and my bullshit!

Get back to work you slacker or you're fired.

In Sussex, if it's not the Devil that makes an appearance, then it's likely to be a dragon.

If drink sales are falling off, we get the pilots to engineer a bit of turbulence. That usually spikes sales.

Why does every plane have two pilots? Really, you only need one pilot. Let's take out the second pilot. Let the bloody computer fly it.

Short of committing murder, negative publicity sells more seats than positive publicity.

MBA students come out with: 'My staff is my most important asset.' Bullshit. Staff is usually your biggest cost. We all employ some lazy bastards who needs a kick up the backside, but no one can bring themselves to admit it.

Ryanair's biggest achievement? Bringing low fares to Europe and still lowering em. Biggest failure? Hiring me.

Germans will crawl bollock-naked over broken glass to get low fares.