Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has taken a fresh swipe at Heathrow Airport, by promising the airline will never fly to and from London’s largest airport “while I live and breathe”.
Mr O’Leary made the remark while appearing as a guest on travel journalist Simon Calder’s daily London Independent podcast.
When asked about the prospect of Ryanair ever opening operations at Heathrow to complement its existing London services at Stansted, Gatwick and Luton, Mr O’Leary said: “Never, ever while I live and breathe.”
Ryanair has long-since shunned Heathrow over what it views as overly high airport fees and charges for airlines.
In response, Ryanair has steadily – over the years – built up its chief European hub at Stansted Airport; a move which, essentially, put that airport on the map as Ryanair is, by far, its largest tenant.
On Simon Calder’s podcast, Mr O’Leary criticised the UK over Brexit and urged the country’s government to “negotiate a sensible free-trade agreement” with the EU to allow for an increased flow of people into the country to fill vital tourism and hospitality-related jobs vacated during the pandemic lockdown.
He also called for the UK to drop its tax on departures to EU destinations.
The Ryanair group chief executive also said he has no immediate plans to retire.
Ryanair’s recent move to add more than 500 flights – equating to around 100,000 extra available seats to destinations like Spain, Italy, Portugal, France and Greece – also prompted Mr O’Leary to have a pop at Heathrow, which has suffered more than most airports with summer travel chaos and has extended its daily departing passenger limit to the end of October.
“While hopeless Heathrow continues to cut flights and raise fares for families, Ryanair and London Stansted continue to add flights, and offer thousands of low-fare seats for the Autumn mid-term break,” Mr O’Leary said last month.
Taking a swipe at Heathrow and its daily cap on passenger numbers, Mr O’Leary said both Ryanair and Stansted have enough staff to handle the additional flights.
