Michael O’Leary has admitted that he wasn’t a fan of Ryanair’s charm offensive towards customers, but that it has worked.
Ryanair changed their policy to a more customer-friendly approach in late 2013 after receiving a torrent of abuse for its inflexible baggage charges and punitive policies.
O’Leary and the management team, however, were not keen on the approach that was led by the company’s staff.
“I was the one who was slow to move. We were the ones telling staff – you will measure everybody’s bag down to the last millimetre,” O’Leary told the annual Carmichael lecture in the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin.
The number of passengers checking in baggage had been reduced from 80% to 20%, but O’Leary admits that it wasn’t worth it given the level of abuse the staff were receiving.
“We over did it. We had people inventing new rules at boarding gates… and we were putting our staff at points of conflict with customers,” he said.
“I didn’t quite get just how stressful it could be to board a Ryanair aircraft,” Mr O’Leary said.
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