Posted on December 09, 2009 by Fiona Hilliard

Job cuts, closures, doom and gloom: bring it on – Michael O’Leary loves it. 

Recently in Brussels, he was asked  by the Wall Street Journal how the recession was affecting Ryanair and the no frills boss had this to say:

“We love recessions. We’ve lowered fares, lowered costs and grown the business by another 15% and pushed a few more competitors out of the way.”

He remained tight-lipped about the Boeing issue however. 

If the truth be known, it looks like Ryanair will abandon their order of 200 Boeing aircraft as the manufacturer now wants to change the delivery conditions. 

All O’ Leary could say was that no final decision had been made over the plane order and he would be discussing it next week at the board meeting.
After 9/11 he famously snapped up 100 aircraft for a rock-bottom price. It doesn’t seem likely that he’ll have the same luck this time…

His back up plan is to approach the rival plane manufacturer, Airbus.  However, Airbus have already made it quite clear that they have no intention of starting a bidding war over Ryanair’s 200 planes.