When reading Tommy Castaldi’s Blog about Ryanair and the article he based his post on I really am shocked at how Ryanair’s management team is treating its customers as well as employees. Tommy claims, “A strong corporate culture is sometimes the best resource to avoid or to contain business accidents”, and I agree with him for the most part. Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary has been in control of the company for many year now and has usually done a good job, it has been only in the recent year that Ryanair has encountered problems. The goal of Ryanair is to get their passengers from point A to B for a cheap price all while being reliable, the problem of today is that this “cheap price” mentality has affected corporate culture. As Tommy stated, Ryanair has “embedded in the low cost business model itself when the concept is pushed to its extreme limits”.

Recently Ryanair had widespread flight cancellations, these affected around 315,000 passengers. Cancellations cost people time and money and  contradict the very strengths the Ryanair brand plays on. These cancellations also affect pilots and staff of the flights. Job action has been occurring and members of the company are no longer satisfied. Employing pilots by way of third-party agencies helps keep prices low as well for Ryanair.  This limits social security costs and allows Ryanair to better use its labor force. This is another reason why pilots keep quitting, the article in The Guardian states that “Irish pilots’ union Ialpa says more than 700 pilots – a sizeable proportion of the 4,200 who fly for Ryanair – have quit this year” (Davies, 2017).

To me it makes perfect sense that customers and employees aren’t happy with Ryanair. How could someone happily work for a company that might fire you at any moment or use a travel agency that will cancel your flight at any given time? Even the pilots refused a bonus of up to $16,000 offered by Ryanair to resolve its scheduling problems. Michael O’Leary really needs to refocus the company’s views and try to stop cutting so many costs since it’s hurting the company’s image. A strong corporate culture is needed here, but not the one that seems to be controlling Ryanair. I believe that if Ryanair follows through one its main promises and goes back to just continuing to grow and not cut costs as well as protect both its employees and passengers this whole mishap can be forgotten. Ethics are at hand, and without strong business ethics a company this large is only set for failure.

 

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Sites

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/sep/23/ryanair-losing-height-cancellations-staffing-crises

 

Pictures:

http://lexpansion.lexpress.fr/entreprises/le-patron-de-ryanair-n-exclut-pas-de-nouvelles-annulations_1945559.html

https://www.independent.ie/life/travel/travel-news/ryanair-launches-connecting-flights-express-booking-in-major-service-upgrade-35599181.html