Ryanair boss declares passengers are safe despite Boeing issues
Ryanair’s chief executive has insisted passengers are safe in its fleet of Boeing aircraft after he raised questions about quality control at the plane manufacturer.
Speaking to Sky News following the Alaska Airlines accident that saw a fuselage panel blow out of a 737 MAX 9, Michael O’Leary said he was sending a team of engineers to oversee production of 57 aircraft he has on order, and his customers should be reassured.
“We don’t fly the MAX 9 so the issue doesn’t apply, there’s none of those aircraft in Europe.
“Boeing make great aircraft. The 737 is the most audited aircraft in history, it’s the oldest and most secure plane in the air, we’re very proud to fly them and we’ve had no kickback or pushback from passengers flying on our aircraft.”
Mr O’Leary said Ryanair will double the number of engineers it has on the ground at production facilities in Wichita, from four to eight, and Seattle, from six to 12, following a request from Boeing, as well as increasing those inspecting their own planes.
A Ryanair team met senior Boeing management including under-pressure chief executive Dave Calhoun in Seattle last week, and told them they had concerns over quality control.
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How Bob found plane door in back yard
Mr O’Leary said he retained full “faith and confidence” in Mr Calhoun but wanted to see improvement in quality control that in the past had seen planes delivered to Ryanair with “a spanner under the floorboards”, and items left in the hold.
He said Boeing had doubled the number of its own engineers on production lines after concerns raised by the failure of a door “plug”, that blew out at 16,000 feet apparently because four bolts had not been secured.
“I have a lot of confidence and time for the work that Dave Calhoun and Brian West, the chief finance officer, have done over the last two years. I think they’ve made very significant improvements,” he said.
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Boeing and Spirit at centre of blowout scare
“But there’s more to do. Ryanair sent a team to Seattle last week, we’ve met with the senior management, they’ve asked us to put more engineers on the ground in Seattle, which we’ve agreed to do.
“And they’ve also committed to putting more engineers that are sitting on top of quality control and quality assurance as the aircraft come off the product or the production facility.
“It is not acceptable that aircraft come out of Wichita, or aircraft get delivered from Seattle with anything wrong with those aircraft, and they need to be checking that all the bolts are secure, that all the fasteners are in the right place and the holes are in the right place.”
Mr O’Leary said he was encouraged that its most recent deliveries from Boeing had been “the best aircraft we’ve ever had from them”, adding that he expects the grounding of the MAX 9s to be lifted as soon as next week as the US-wide inspection process is completed.
Ryanair has orders for a further 57 planes to be delivered this year but to date has received only seven from Boeing, and Mr O’Leary said a likely shortfall will hit its target of flying 205 million passengers this year.
“We think we’d be lucky to get 50 by the end of June, which is just in time for the peak summer this year. So there’s no doubt we’re going to be short some aircraft.
“Our plan was to grow this year to 205 million passengers, it’s more likely to be 200, 201, 202, million. So we have to grow a little bit slower. But maybe that’s a good thing in the overall context of the work that Boeing has to do on its assembly line in Seattle.”
Mr O’Leary also rejected the British government’s plan, announced in the King’s Speech, to clamp down on “drip pricing”, the practice whereby additional costs are added into consumer purchases.
Read more:
What is drip pricing and how can we resist it?
Boeing chief admits lapse in quality control after Alaska ‘blowout’ scare
Ryanair says any “ancillary” costs added on to ticket prices, for baggage or seat priority, are legitimate and transparent, and called on the prime minister to focus on online travel agents he accused of “scamming” customers.
“What [Rishi Sunak] should be tackling is the online travel agency scams that are going on where you have these people masquerading as price comparison websites, but then duping people into making bookings and getting overcharged for air fares and overcharged some cases by 200% or 300%. That could be eliminated before the next election.”
He also called for the chief executive of National Air Traffic Control, Martin Rolfe, to be sacked following the air traffic control failure last summer, and described Brexit as “a disaster for the British economy” that made red tape in the UK more onerous than in Europe.
The cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), which halted production for nearly six weeks at its sites, cost the company roughly £200m, it has been revealed.
Latest accounts released on Friday showed “cyber-related costs” were £196m, which does not include the fall in sales.
Profits took a nose dive, falling from nearly £400m (£398m) a year ago to a loss of £485m in the three months to the end of September.
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Revenues dropped nearly 25% and the effects may continue as the manufacturing halt could slow sales in the final three months of the year, executives said.
The impact of the shutdown also hit factories across the car-making supply chain.
Slowing the UK economy
The production pause was a large contributor to a contraction in UK economic growth in September, official figures showed.
Had car output not fallen 28.6%, the UK economy would have grown by 0.1% during the month. Instead, it fell by 0.1%.
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How cyber attack ‘effectively hacked GDP’
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Reacting to JLR’s impact on the GDP contraction, its chief financial officer, Richard Molyneux, said it was “interesting to hear” and it “goes to reinforce” that JLR is really important in the UK economy.
The company, he said, is the “biggest exporter of goods in the entire country” and the effect on GDP “is a reflection of the success JLR has had in past years”.
Recovery
The company said operations were “pretty much back running as normal” and plants were “at or approaching capacity”.
Production of all luxury vehicles resumed.
Investigations are underway into the attack, with law enforcement in “many jurisdictions” involved, the company said.
When asked about the cause of the hack and the hackers, JLR said it was not in a position to answer questions due to the live investigation.
A run of attacks
The manufacturer was just one of a number of major companies to be seriously impacted by cyber criminals in recent months.
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Are we in a cyber attack ‘epidemic’?
High street retailer Marks and Spencer estimated the cost of its IT outage was roughly £136m. The sum only covers the cost of immediate incident systems response and recovery, as well as specialist legal and professional services support.
The Co-Op and Harrods also suffered service disruption caused by cyber attacks.
Four people were arrested by police investigating the incidents.
Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have scrapped plans to break their manifesto pledge and raise income tax rates in a massive U-turn less than two weeks from the budget.
The decision, first reported in the Financial Times, comes after a bruising few days which has brought about a change of heart in Downing Street.
Read more: How No 10 plunged itself into crisis
I understand Downing Street has backed down amid fears about the backlash from disgruntled MPs and voters.
The Treasury and Number 10 declined to comment.
The decision is a massive about-turn. In a news conference last week, the chancellor appeared to pave the way for manifesto-breaking tax rises in the budget on 26 November.
She spoke of difficult choices and insisted she could neither increase borrowing nor cut spending in order to stabilise the economy, telling the public “everyone has to play their part”.
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‘Aren’t you making a mockery of voters?’
The decision to backtrack was communicated to the Office for Budget Responsibility on Wednesday in a submission of “major measures”, according to the Financial Times.
The chancellor will now have to fill an estimated £30bn black hole with a series of narrower tax-raising measures and is also expected to freeze income tax thresholds for another two years beyond 2028, which should raise about £8bn.
Tory shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith said: “We’ve had the longest ever run-up to a budget, damaging the economy with uncertainty, and yet – with just days to go – it is clear there is chaos in No 10 and No 11.”
How did we get here?
For weeks, the government has been working up options to break the manifesto pledge not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT on working people.
I was told only this week the option being worked up was to do a combination of tax rises and action on the two-child benefit cap in order for the prime minister to be able to argue that in breaking his manifesto pledges, he is trying his hardest to protect the poorest in society and those “working people” he has spoken of so endlessly.
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Ed Conway on the chancellor’s options
But days ago, officials and ministers were working on a proposal to lift the basic rate of income tax – perhaps by 2p – and then simultaneously cut national insurance contributions for those on the basic rate of income tax (those who earn up to £50,000 a year).
That way the chancellor can raise several billion in tax from those with the “broadest shoulders” – higher-rate taxpayers and pensioners or landlords, while also trying to protect “working people” earning salaries under £50,000 a year.
The chancellor was also going to take action on the two-child benefit cap in response to growing demand from the party to take action on child poverty. It is unclear whether those plans will now be shelved given the U-turn on income tax.
A rough week for the PM
The change of plan comes after the prime minister found himself engulfed in a leadership crisis after his allies warned rivals that he would fight any attempted post-budget coup.
It triggered a briefing war between Wes Streeting and anonymous Starmer allies attacking the health secretary as the chief traitor.
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Read more: Is Starmer ‘in office but not in power’?
The prime minister has since apologised to Mr Streeting, who I am told does not want to press for sackings in No 10 in the wake of the briefings against him.
But the saga has further damaged Sir Keir and increased concerns among MPs about his suitability to lead Labour into the next general election.
Insiders clearly concluded that the ill mood in the party, coupled with the recent hits to the PM’s political capital, makes manifesto-breaking tax rises simply too risky right now.
But it also adds to a sense of chaos, given the chancellor publicly pitch-rolled tax rises in last week’s news conference.
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