Originally Posted by loobtastic

Of course that's Smirnoff's opinion.
But, the point is, if the training is lacking , surely the response by the Cabin crew to any potential emergency situation will be lacking too.

Originally Posted by Irish Independent

.....He scoops me up from the reception of his Dublin Airport HQ and, upstairs, we discuss how he can afford to sell tickets for nothing. The point is that he has fixed costs - planes, crews, landing rights - and it is better to make some money selling passengers insurance, car hire and soft drinks than to fly empty planes. Besides, next time the punters will probably think of Ryanair. Because, I say, everyone likes a bargain. "It's not so much they like a bargain. It's that they've been ripped off for the past 50 years because governments got together with the airlines after 1945. BA got the monopoly in the UK, Air France the monopoly in France and Lufthansa the monopoly in Germany. This is the only industry where the producers are allowed by the idiots in Brussels to get together once or twice a year to fix the fares and capacities and get anti-trust immunity to do it. It's a joke."

O'Leary took the controls at Ryanair in 1994 after being recruited from the world of finance by its founder, Tony Ryan, in 1988. He has taken it from the brink of bankruptcy to the brink of overtaking Lufthansa as the largest international scheduled carrier. "We're the big boys now," he boasts.

You'll never find a Ryanair steward pressing a complimentary glass of champagne in your hand, but many of the treats that the posher big boys offer you don't miss: reclining seats that recline into your face; foil-lipped quasi-meals; seat pockets containing the last passenger's wet wipes. True, there is no question of even a drinks voucher if your flight is delayed, but what do you expect for an average fare of €42 (BA's fuel surcharge alone is €50)?

Yet unlike those other pioneers of cheaper flying - Freddie Laker, Richard Branson and Stelios Haji-Ioannou - O'Leary is no one's national treasure. Why? "I'm probably just an obnoxious little bollocks. Who cares? The purpose is not to be loved. The purpose is to have the passengers on board. Being successful is about having the lowest costs; that means beating the crap out of suppliers, and most of our suppliers are government-owned airports or agencies, which means we fight constantly with governments and idiot Brussels bureaucrats who want to put up the cost of travel, or half-witted environmentalists who can't add two and two."

Guilty

Has he never thought that being pleasant might be a better approach? "I'm always actually very pleasant, but don't believe in trotting out all that PC claptrap just not to upset a couple of f***ing environmental lunatics. They are just loons."

But are they? With the planet going to hell, perhaps we should feel guilty about air travel. "Absolutely not. Keep flying. I smile at these environmental loons who drive their SUVs down to the supermarket on a Saturday morning. If you're concerned about the environment, stop driving. Aircraft account for 4pc of emissions in Europe, motor cars for 28pc."

There is no space to detail the individuals who have crossed O'Leary: Mary O'Rourke; the airline's millionth customer, who took him to court when told her lifetime free flights did not cover a bank holiday weekend; the cerebral-palsy sufferer who successfully sued after being charged for a wheelchair.

Even the British police have been added to the list, after a terrorism scare diverted a plane to Prestwick, in Scotland.

"Those police force were outstanding in their field," he says. Were they? "Yes, 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." He says bookings jumped by a fifth after the Prestwick diversion. "It's because the papers are all over Sky News. As long as it's not safety-related, there's no such thing as bad publicity."

But safety was exactly the issue that in February Ryanair: Caught Napping, an edition of Channel 4's Dispatches, tried to raise. The secretly filmed documentary depicted dirty planes, invigilated by exhausted crew, being flown by pilots working right up to the legal limit for flying. "But the maximum number of hours is 900 a year, divided by 46 weeks: 18 hours a week," he protests. "People don't understand. There's a reason there's a legal maximum: you can't go over it. It's designed to ensure that they are rested. They're working 18 hours a week! How would you not be rested?"

What about the cabin crew, shown literally weeping with fatigue? "OK. We got the rosters for the two journalists who'd been working (undercover as crew) for the three months. One averaged 36 hours a week, one 28 hours. They filmed one in her flat late at night who, crying and whispering, claimed to have been at work since 4am and just got back at 8pm. Rubbish! We have maximum duty days of 14 hours. She never did it! What you're left with is two journalists, one of whom was working a four-day week and the other working a three-and-a-half-day week - which I accept for journalists is a very busy week."

And the sick that they covered up with perfume? "There's sick bags on board the aircraft and lots of cloths. If there's a very bad one, you call the cleaners at the airport. It's no big issue."

Even though they have only 25 minutes' turnaround on the ground? "How long does it take to clean up some sick?"

On the night of transmission O'Leary held a staff party and handed out "Oscars" - rather than P45s - to the employees who had told the greatest "porkies" on camera. Not only had C4 not landed the killer blow but, after transmission, bookings rose 15pc. Yet surely, I say, any other employer would want to learn from a programme that had spent five months secretly filming his business. Does he never make mistakes?

"I make the wrong decision on numerous different things. The most recent was when I launched an in-flight entertainment system about a year ago. It was going to be the future of aviation, everybody flying for free but buying movies onboard." What went wrong? "I was persuaded against my better judgment to put lottery scratch cards on board as well. I said, 'Forget it, they're for morons'. After about three months, nobody was playing the DVDs because everybody was scratching lottery cards. So we took the DVDs off and made more room for scratch cards. If that's what the publics wants . . . "