O’Leary on the 737-MAX… APD and “Boris Island”

The shy and retiring CEO of Ryanair Michael O’Leary has looked at the new 737-MAX project. And his words on it could be worrying for Boeing with the amount of planes Ryanair has ordered in the past.

Talks are ongoing, but the shy CEO stated that re-engineered plane is a “dog’s dinner of a design”, and that it had been drawn “on the back of a fag packet as a response to the Airbus Neo”.

Ouch.

Furthermore, whilst there are pretty renderings of the plane O’Leary goes onto complain Boeing can’t tell you what the Max looks like or what the fuel saving is”.

Ryanair is currently negotiating with Boeing over more 737-800’s or 8-MAX’s as the fleet starts to age slowly.

However, it’s good to hear that the loony wing of Ryanair is up to usual madness with the idea of a standing-only area and deleting the rear lavatories from the plane. Even the regulators still aren’t buying into the idea of standing-area flights.

Maybe there are little mercies in the world to stop Ryanair’s pursuit of taking whatever pleasure there remains in flying out of it (not to mention the safety implications there could be).

What could really scare Boeing is the work Ryanair is doing with Comac and it’s C919 project (the in developing a 200 seat variant of the C919. With a massive order like that, it could propel the Comac project into the stratosphere

Of course, this could be just O’Leary trying to scare Boeing into lowering its prices. Which is entirely likely.

Never one to miss a round of attacking people, he then turned his venom on UK Government, and it’s lack of clear policy on aviation. And the joy of Air Passenger Duty which has caused traffic numbers to drop by 20% since it’s major restructuring in 2007.

Speaking further on aviation policy, O’Leary rubbishes the idea of Boris Island (the Thames Esturary airport stating a lack of infrastructure and timeframes (30 years plus), and would rather add runways at the existing London Hubs

Well he’s nothing if outspoken. And… rather annoying.