Why Ryanair’s hard-nosed efficiency is a lesson for no-frill Indian air carriers like IndiGo

Ryanair’s strength is its operational efficiency. Having learnt its business model from the US budget carrier Southwest Airlines more than three decades ago, the Dublin-headquartered airline has taken its obsession with lowering costs to new levels. As its CEO, Michael O’Leary, told the Financial Times last week, “If I could get rid of everyone’s bags, I’d have a much better airline."

Introducing baggage fees for everyone who checks-in luggage not only reduced the share of passengers checking bags in from 80% to 20%, it speeded up aircraft turnaround time at airports, now just 25 minutes. Ryanair charges people who don’t check-in online and doesn’t offer refunds on tickets bought. There are listicles online of O’Leary quotes and this is a legendary one: “You’re not getting a refund so [bleep] off. We don’t want to hear your sob stories."

The most revolutionary of the maxims Ryanair lives by is a plain-speaking contract with passengers. As the Wall Street Journal’s Benjamin Katz reported after an interview with O’Leary a few years ago, “He was very distinct in saying that ‘we don’t treat our customers like guests. We give them a seat to fly on, and that’s the agreement.’"

There are lessons here for Indian airlines, regulators and the flying public. We need a similar contract between airlines and passengers so that airlines can run no-frill, efficient operations and use the savings to treat their overworked pilots and staff more equitably.

As a former travel, food and drink editor for the Financial Times who believes airline service is the most over-discussed subject at dinner parties, I would argue that airlines in India offer better value for money than anywhere else. This week, looking at absurdly low airfares from Bengaluru to Rajasthan while navigating eye-watering hotel tariffs in Jaipur in March led to a dislocation so severe that I wondered if I was forgetting how to count.

By contrast, Ryanair charges an additional fee of almost ₹6,000 from passengers who check-in at the airport. A 10kg bag for check-in notified at the time of booking the ticket would cost about ₹1,000 but as much as ₹4,000 if done at the airport. The fee on additional cabin baggage beyond a small bag is comparable.

O’Leary has even said that he would like to charge customers to use toilets on board, though it was not clear if he was serious. The customer is usually not right in his world-view: “If you don’t comply with our rules, we hate you and we will torture you. But if you comply, we love you."

Although many O’Learyisms make their way into the company’s rulebook, some of them, in a manner not unlike Warren Buffett’s, are delivered because they are eye-catching and make for good copy for business journalists who must otherwise cover management tutored by public relations firms.

He is on the record as having said that Nigel Farage, who polls suggest may become the UK’s next prime minister, “should be in prison" for championing Brexit.

Recently, he revealed that US President Donald Trump had in 2016 turned on a charm offensive over a phone call. “Fifty minutes later, he [was] still going and his basic thing was, ‘We want more flights to Prestwick (in Scotland) and into Shannon (in Ireland) so that people can fly to his golf courses,’" he told the FT. Trump offered O’Leary a stay at one of his hotels. Did he stay? “No I did [bleep] not," O’Leary said.

Even his straight talk and comic asides are dedicated to the bottom-line. It’s cheap publicity. After more than 30 years as CEO, he is still looking to lead it for another several years but has narrowed his focus tellingly to “aircraft negotiations, cash generation and financial discipline." One more role, as marketer in chief, remains his as long as he is CEO. Ryanair spends relatively little on marketing: €4 million compared with €45 million by Air France or KLM.

If we want the ultimate Indian ‘jugaad’ to continue—i.e., low-fare services that mostly get us to our destinations on time despite high-maintenance customers who often don’t follow simple instructions and usually have too much hand luggage—we need to use Ryanair as a case study of ‘tough love’ for passengers. It doesn’t even offer seat pockets. Once again, this is to speed up turnaround times and reduce cabin cleaning costs.

The logic of the Indigo model, which runs a single-aircraft-model fleet and also turns planes around quickly, suggests that it would benefit most by doing what Ryanair does. It could use the money made by charging for both hand luggage and check-in suitcases to give its pilots more time off and reduce night flights that add disproportionately to pilot fatigue.

Some pilots allege that even reductions in night flying under new roster rules are being obeyed by following their letter rather than spirit. “For management, we are just a number," says one Indigo pilot.

Our airlines need to focus on charging passengers more and treating their own staff better. We should also question why our metro-city airports are now pleasure palaces so lavish that railway passengers would think them a hallucination. It’s time to end these sops for the middle-class and rich.

The author is a former Financial Times foreign correspondent.