Читать книгу Ruinair - Paul Kilduff - Страница 7

On low fares: ‘People ask how we can have such low fares. I tell them our pilots work for nothing.’

On destination airports: ‘Sometimes there is not even a road to the airports we fly to.’

On flying gangs of lager louts on stag weekends: ‘We call them the Chianti louts heading to villas in Tuscany and the South of France.’

On competition: ‘Any idiot can paint a plane and start out offering low fares. It’s about sustainability. We’ve been profitable now for twenty years. Nobody else can compete with us. They’re all screwed.’

On in-flight gambling: ‘A lot of people are, frankly, bored on flights. We believe they have a high propensity to get involved in all sorts of games. We might have the pilot calling out the bingo numbers.’

On how his airline might fail: ‘Nuclear war in Europe, a major accident or believing our own bullshit. In any airline there is always a strong possibility of management stupidity. The biggest threat we face is a management fuckup.’

On future fares: ‘I have a vision in the future that we will be flying everyone for free, but I’m damned if I’m going to pay for them to fly.’

On future travel: ‘We may not be even flying in 2030. We may be all beamed about like Star Trek.’

On opening new routes: ‘We never want to be the explorers, they always get their heads shot off.’

On trains: ‘Trains are incredibly over-subsidised and don’t service people’s needs. The trains were fine in Victorian times when if you didn’t have a stable you walked, but no one needs to use them now.’

On politics: ‘I think the most influential person in Europe in the last twenty to thirty years has without doubt been Margaret Thatcher, who has left a lasting legacy that has driven us towards lower taxes and greater efficiency. And without her we’d all be living in some bloody inefficient unemployed French republic.’

On women: ‘I generally get on very well with women, but I used to work seven days a week and usually sixteen-hour days. I had no time for girlfriends. I didn’t have girlfriends for ten or fifteen years.’

On fatherhood: ‘I want to spend more time at the office. I am staying in the guest room and I don’t plan to re-emerge until my son is at least two years old and ready to take instructions. I’m taking the company approach to it: I am subcontracting everything.’

On retirement: ‘It will be some time after we have established world domination, then it will be time for me to go. I will leave the airline when it’s not growing rapidly and when it’s getting dull and boring. I won’t be gone in three or five years’ time. But I have promised my wife that I will be.’

On succession: ‘In the future the company will need a chief executive who is different than I am. As the biggest carrier in Europe, they would have no use for someone who runs around in jeans and calls politicians idiots and says that the EU Commission is made up of Communists. I’m good at doing the loud-mouth and fighting everyone but it will be inappropriate to have somebody here shouting, swearing, abusing the competition. We will need more professional management than me.’

On regrets: ‘I don’t look back at all. I’m forty-seven and I’m not going to be sitting here pulling wool out of my navel wishing I had done something differently. This is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.’

On personal popularity: ‘I don’t give a shite if nobody likes me. I am not a cloud bunny, I am not an aerosexual. I don’t like aeroplanes. I never wanted to be a pilot like those other platoons of goons who populate the airline industry. 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.’