Ryanair will be forced to scrap a planned expansion of UK flights unless it is allowed to hire foreign air stewards, chief executive Michael O’Leary has said.
Mr O’Leary warned that British workers no longer want to work as cabin crew, and attacked “insane” post-Brexit rules that stop the company from deploying foreign workers at its 13 bases in the country.
He said that it threatens the Irish carrier’s plans to station 20 more aircraft at British airports by the end of the decade, an increase that will create as many as 1,000 jobs.
Mr O’Leary said: “The UK needs entry-level labour and young kids are no longer willing to do those jobs because there’s full employment. People don’t want to be cabin crew anymore. If they don’t, fine, let’s bring in Spanish or Italian or central European citizens.”
Simply raising wages to attract new hires is not an option, with Ryanair crew already paid between £30,000 and £50,000 a year, he said.
Mr O’Leary also suggested he would be happy to carry deportees on flights to Rwanda under Sunak’s plans to crack down on illegal immigration.
However, Ryanair would only have spare aircraft available in the winter, he said – and Kigali is also beyond the range of non-stop flights with its narrow-body jets.
An arch-opponent of Brexit in the run up to the 2016 referendum, Mr O’Leary said Ryanair’s UK footprint would have been bigger without the decision to leave. However, Britain remains far and away the carrier’s biggest market, with almost a third of its total passengers.
Mr O’Leary also appealed to Labour to take steps to ease freedom of movement should it win the next election, and called on the party to pursue an effective trade deal with the European Union.
He said: “Brexit is done, nobody cares anymore. The whole thing now is how you make the best of it. You’re not going to rejoin the EU, that’s fine, I accept that, but do a trade deal that gives maximum access to the European economy.”
Scrapping the Air Passenger Duty tax, at least for airports away from London, would also spur huge growth in air travel and tourism to and from the UK, he said. The tax adds £13 to the cost of a typical Ryanair flight.
Mr O’Leary spoke before the publication of a report into Ryanair’s contribution to the British economy commissioned from York Aviation, which suggests that the company delivers £14bn a year in gross added value and supports 98,000 jobs.
He said: “I don’t think we’re appreciated or understood. We’re a massive inward investor in the UK and I think we can do more.”
Mr O’Leary confirmed that Ryanair will be 15 to 20 aircraft short of its planned fleet for the summer peak following delayed 737 Max handovers from Boeing tied to the planemaker’s quality-control crisis, even as some deliveries are brought forward.
Summer bookings are looking strong, he said, with fares expected to increase by 5-10pc over the period and network-wide passenger numbers swelling to 200 million for the full year.
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