Choose your weapon: what will it be, letters or newspaper ads? Aer Rianta chairman, Noel Hanlon, and Ryanair chief executive, Michael O'Leary, must have been facing one another recently each misty November dawn, in recurring duels of wits and words. At issue is the life-and-death question of airport passenger charges.
Ryanair is in campaign mode, seeking the support of its passengers and the public thus: "If airport authorities got privatised, would we have this bill?" Aer Rianta is fighting back with an attack on Ryanair's figures. Both have taken out costly newspaper advertisements to make their points to the public. A reader might see the Aer Rianta claim that £2 per Ryanair ticket is all that goes to Aer Rianta and shrug, "So?" The reader might happen to know that Ryanair wants it reduced to 50p - but who would the £1.50 saving go to? The same reader's intelligence is underestimated by Ryanair's full-page ad claiming that Aer Rianta's alleged higher charges - unspecified in all the space of a whole page - will lead to Irish job losses due to Aer Rianta's monopoly now about to "ruin things for everybody".
The very fact of Ryanair's well-earned success contradicts any claim that Aer Rianta's monopoly, of itself, prevents the development of low-cost travel. But then, advertising is not about reasoned argument. You might expect better from "private" letters. Mr Hanlon wrote to his customer, Mr O'Leary, on November 24th: "I refer to . . . Ryanair promising yet again to open up new routes to Europe . . . your proposals are based on dubious tourism projections and unrealistic passenger spends." Seeking further to win friends and influence people, he says: "Since you commenced operation [on the Paris and Brussels routes], they have grown by 360,000 passengers, a long way short of the promised 1 million." On Aer Rianta's charges, he said that the Ryanair claims of a 100 per cent increase next year "are completely untrue" and that Aer Rianta's discount scheme will continue to 2005.
As we know from the baggage handlers dispute, Michael O'Leary is not one to shirk a scrap. With all the signs of having grabbed his dictaphone immediately, he wrote a caustic reply to Mr Hanlon the same day, marked "Private and Confidential" (both men's letters were made available to the media by their respective PR people).
"The content of your letter is . . . a nonsense. Even you couldn't believe this rubbish, so I presume it is being peddled for the consumption of others, be it your board or your friends in the Department." Dear Michael spoke of Dear Noel's "jaded memory", twice, offered "congratulations on losing Ireland 800,000 passengers this year" and referred to the "frankly dangerous" state of the terminal at Dublin.
On reading both letters, one is still left in the dark as to whether Aer Rianta charges are uncompetitive now, or will be in the future.
Mr O'Leary makes the point that Ryanair's low fares formula works equally well out of Britain and does not depend on Irish traffic at either end. Yes. A winning formula can be applied in different markets. But in a weird non sequitur, Mr O'Leary implies that the 800,000 passengers Ryanair will carry this year from Britain to continental Europe would have been carried from Ireland to the same destinations, but for uncompetitive Aer Rianta prices. So, Dear Noel, you've lost 800,000 passengers for Ireland. As if all those passengers from Britain would have come to Ireland first from London and then flown on to Oslo, Pisa, St Etienne and so on.
Is Mr O'Leary being deliberately risen by Aer Rianta? Perhaps Aer Rianta calculates that his abrasiveness might rebound on him. Or is it the other way round - is Aer Rianta being baited? Mr O'Leary teases the Aer Rianta chairman: "Why don't you . . . do away with your expensive personalised stationery? Isn't this a bit wasteful for a semi-state company?" Why not, indeed, but then Ryanair could look at why its stationery apparently fails to comply with company law requirements to list company directors and its registered office. Ryanair's objective, to get Aer Rianta to reduce its prices and hence Ryanair's operating costs, will not be achieved by these aggressive tactics. Ryanair is right on so many counts, but it is a shame to see it engage in wasteful, unfocused invective. Aer Rianta's objective is surely to withstand Ryanair's pressure, and to stave off any political or official sympathy for the Ryanair case. Do confrontational tactics help it, either? Does the advertising spend of either actually achieve anything? Whatever happened to negotiations? It is time these two got a grip on themselves.
Oliver O'Connor is an investment funds specialist.
