Mr O’Leary also said low cost transatlantic carrier is his retirement dream project. He confirmed that the company will offer services from Europe to US for €10.

He is expecting the Irish Government to give away its 25% stake in Aer Lingus to Ryanair only. As said by Aer Lingus chief executive Christoph the fact that Ryanair will be holding 30% stake in the company is no less than taking a poison pill.

Mr O’Leary said, Ryanair definitely has no control over Aer Lingus. According to him, Aer Lingus is being run by government bureaucrats rather than its current CEO Christoph Mueller.

Mr Haji-Ioannou was against the strategy at Luton-based EasyJet, the aim of which was to increase the number of seats by 7.5pc a year in July, despite the fact that 15pc was an average of the seat numbers between 2005 and 2008.

Mr O’Leary considered that there is no use to fulfill such plan and, moreover, the company did not have future. He also added that in case Stelios was ready to rival with Ryanair, the company would have to diminish its ticket prices.

It was noted that during six months the average ticket price of Ryanair went down 17pc to €39. As for EasyJet, its passenger income per seat went up 6.4pc to £41.42 in the third quarter by the end of June 30.

One should say that Ryanair is considered to be number one discount airline in Europe and was planning to purchase the 200 aircraft from Boeing by the end of the year.

Soon negotiation will be carried between Ryanair and EasyJet. But even now one can feel tense atmosphere between the companies. Mr O’Leary said that he would go away from negotiations and even abrogate some commitments in case it was impossible to make a deal.

“It must be difficult for Stelios to see us continue to grow while his airline grows more slowly, if at all,”said Stephen McNamara, spokesman of Ryanair.

According to Mr Haji-Ioannou, EasyJet offered a growth plan that was considered to be more reasonable and much more profitable. “The company is performing very well and the growth rate has been moderated,” said Mr Haji-Ioannou

During this year EasyJet earned 33pc and the value of the company is £1.59bn, as for Ryanair, its shares fell 3.4pc and worth €4.24bn.

Once again, Ryanair’s competitors are skeptical on how efficient its business model actually is. Whether this is only due to the fact that they are jealous competitors or because they truly believe what they say, it still instills doubt in all’s minds. And actually, it’s been a while since Ryanair announced its strategy, and there nothing is new in the way he has been running it. Strange then that Stelios still criticizes Ryanair’s strategy, afterall, Ryanair has been following the same route for a decade now.

Today, I wanted to get back to this important point. Ryanair’s final strategy is to make passenger fly for free. Indeed, since I’ve been following Michael O’Leary, he has declared several times that he wants to achieve a free air travel model. Of course, to reach this “ideal”, he has to find new opportunities that will allow him to further lower his fares. This is what I want to talk about today, for my first “guest appearance” and contribution to Airline Post!

If Ryanair really wants to make passengers fly for free, he doesn’t have so many options. I only identified 4 opportunities, but none of them seems to bear much or any potential for that matter.

1. Putting pressure on airports to lower there charges and hence its own

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For several months now, we’ve clearly seen that Ryanair is pushing airports to exempt it of charges. This, would allow the Irish airline to save a significant amount, which in turn, could allow it to lower its fares. According to recent cases I’ve been following, it’s clear that this has become Ryanair’s main focus. First it was Manchester Airport, then Dublin, Shannon and finally, Kerry. A Slovak newspaper recently mentioned how the company was also pressuring the Bratislava and Vienna Airports. Another recent case, Euroairport, was also reported. Each time, Ryanair declares it will “continue to lower fares to encourage travel, but with passengers paying lower fares airports must lower their charges – particularly high cost airports like Basel, Stansted and Dublin”. Howver, people are not travelling that much more because a larger number of airports are not willing to accept Ryanair’s blackmail. Manchester Airport’s Chief was the first one to declare that “Manchester Airport will not prostitute itself to Ryanair”. Later, when Ryanair announced that it would cut routes from Dublin Airport because of increasing airport charges, the DAA (Dublin Airport Authority), not only answered that “its airport charges are among the lowest in Europe”, it also added that “Ryanair’s decision is based purely on the economic downturn”.

More alarming for Ryanair, is that all these airports have unveiled over the past few weeks how Ryanair’s departure have left the field open for other low cost airlines to recover Ryanair’s abandoned routes. It simply means that airports now realize that any low cost airline could bring back passengers. I think Ryanair is not as stronger as before in the power struggle against airports. Manchester has thus opened a breach that others airport  are only going to widen.

2. Creating a new tax

When you see O’Leary latest announcements about a new tax, none of them seem realistic: the one about making passengers stand during flights, the fat tax, the toilet tax or even O’Leary announcement that he’d force passengers to carry their own luggage into the plane can’t be taken seriously. In fcat, these are all examples of O’Leary’s PR stunt (something that also got me going in a previous post!). The lastest “project” is to charge passengers who forget to print their boarding pass €100, while the current fee is €40. Just take a look at the comments left on Twitter and you’ll see that this “fine”, as O’Leary calls it, is very unpopular. Moreover, two main threats have to be taken into considered if Ryanair wants to go any further. These two threats have been mentioned by the LCC representatives at the last LCC summit in Barcelona. One is related to what Julian Carr, the Commercial Director of Bmibaby, called “consumer acceptance”. Similar sentiments were shared by Flybe’s Rutter and easyJet Founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou. Rutter believes the upper limit for Flybe in terms of ancillary revenue will represent 15% to 20% of its total revenue. Ryanair’s ancillary already represents over 21% of its global revenues. I think, once more, that Ryanair already used all the opportunities it could. Another threat mentioned at the Barcelona summit was that of the UE regulation, which is to be avoided as it would mean for heavier restrictions. This explains why Mike Rutter, Flybe’s Chief Commercial Officer, said “he’s worried about regulation,” and “asks the industry to heed this call for self-control.” So O’Leary also has to be aware that an excessive tax policy could lead to even more restrictive regulation.

3. Decreasing structural costs

Ryanair is well known for its very strict cost cutting policy. Every penny invested has to turn a profit. The fact is, I believe that Ryanair does not have that much leeway in that direction either. Ryanair probably has the most efficient  cost policy among airline companies nowadays, and as an expert was saying a week ago, “it’s difficult to see how they can keep squeezing costs out of the business”, and then added that “at the end of the day, you need your two pilots, and you need a number of crew per aircraft“. Ryanair announced recently that it’ll “continue to reduce staff costs, with a pay freeze in both the current and coming year” and already moved to a web check-in only policy. What’s next? I trust O’Leary to find other costs to cut, but these would not be significant, and wouldn’t allow him to lower his fares substantially. Too much has already been done in this matter.

4. Striking another very attractive deal with Boeing

Back in 2002, Michael O’Leary managed to get a very attractive deal with Boeing for its current fleet. When the market broke down after the 9/11 terrorist attack, Ryanair obtained a substantial discount for its 155 new aircrafts, taking full advantage of the downturn in airplane orders caused by the slump in air travel. Today, even if Boeing is in trouble with its new 787 Dreamliner, it seems that the global economic situation is getting better and that Boeing can expect new orders to come in, in the next few months, especially from the Indian and Chinese markets. Tough negotiation and Ryanair’s threats however, point to important difficulties in reaching an agreement. Ryanair needs this deal to go through because it has to change its planes approximately every 5 years, otherwise it will face heavy revision costs (planes would be grounded during the revision period, adding to sunk costs and account heavily for profit losses). For now though, it seems that Ryanair can’t expect any significant gain out of this deal.

But this is just my point, please tell us if you think O’Leary is able to make passengers fly for free! and how!

According to the Journal, Ryanair was one of the biggest airlines that accomplished a possible order for 200 of its 737 model for more than a year. In case the order did not continue to be successful then the carrier would lower its evaluation.

“The difficulty has just been in getting someone in Boeing to make a decision. Boeing seem to have a degree of internal turmoil,” said O’Leary

O’Leary also added that if Ryanair did not conclude an agreement with Boeing until the end of the year, the company would have to reduce growth ratio up till 2012, by means of cancellations and some deferral charges. It meant that from 2012 the business would begin to run from maximized revenue.

But according to The Irish Times, O’Leary wanted to clinch a bargain with Boeing in order to defect to European rival Airbus in the past. But it did not work as the route was closed off by Airbus. It happened so because Airbus did not agree to sell aircraft to Ryanair at the knock-down prices offered by O’Leary.

The Source blog considered that the situation could be different at that moment. And the possibility of ending the partnership between Boeing and Ryanair occurred. It would be inability to think things out to interpret O’Leary’s threats to Boeing as empty ones. Without any doubt Ryanair was able to leave behind Boeing as Ryanair has more than EUR2.5 billion in cash on reserve that was considered to be a peculiar position of strength for any major airline.