Gatwick, Waterford being ninety miles from Dublin and shortly to be renamed Dublin South International. Use a single turbo-prop fifteen-seater Bandeirante aircraft which today would not hold all your management team. Hire only cabin crew smaller than 5 foot 2 inches to operate in the tiny cabin. Employ 51 people and fly 5,000 passengers between Britain and Ireland.
1986
Launch a second route: Dublin to London Lootin’. Charge £99 for a flight (which seems steep now but was half the price charged by the two flag carriers). Run press advertising campaigns which ask ‘Do you want to pay £100 for breakfast?’ Use two 46-seater BAE-748 aircraft. Launch a Knock to Lootin’ route, Knock being a village in the west of Ireland where the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared and granted favours, much like the Holy Stone of Clonrickett as seen in Father Ted. Employ 151 people and fly 82,000 passengers.
1987
Lease three bac1-11 aircraft from Tarom, the Romanian state airline. The planes come with Romanian pilots and crew, making for challenging cabin announcements. Increase the number of routes to fifteen, all between Ireland and the uk. Lose £3 million. Employ 212 people and fly 322,000 passengers.
1988
Lease three more aircraft from Tarom, making six in all. Launch the first routes to Europe: Dublin to Brussels (not Charleroi) and Munich (not Friedrichshafen). Launch a business class service and a frequent flyer club, neither of which endure. Incur more losses. All is gloom and doom. Employ 379 people and fly 592,000 passengers. Appoint an assistant to Mr Ruin called Mick O’Leery: born 20 March 1961, son of Timothy and Gerarda originally from Co. Cork, the eldest boy of six children, educated at St Mary’s national school and the Christian Bothers in Mullingar, and Clongowes Wood College in Co. Kildare, a graduate of Economics & Social Studies from Trinity College Dublin and formerly a trainee tax accountant for eighteen months with KPMG Stokes Kennedy Crowley Dublin (where he assisted Mr Ruin with his tax affairs) and a successful former owner of three corner newsagent shops in Walkinstown, Terenure and Crumlin.
1989
Lose more money hand over fist. Employ 477 people and fly 644,000 passengers. The new guy called Mick tells you to shut down the airline due to the huge and accumulating losses, his first and only mistake.
1990
Realise you have lost £20 million due to intense competition from BA and Aer Lingus. Tell the government you are going to shut down and will lay off the workforce unless you get rights to fly to London’s newest out of town airport, Stansted. Invest £20 million additional cash when no one believes your airline can fly. Send the chap called Mick to Southwest Airlines in Texas, USA: a low fares airline flying only one type of plane to out of the way airports with quick turnaround times and high flight frequency and where passengers find their own seats on board and pay for drinks and food. Allow Mick to nick all Southwest’s best ideas as he returns to Dublin to implement a new and identical business model. Employ 493 staff and fly 745,000 passengers.
1991
Commence Dublin to Stansted flights. The Gulf War causes traffic to plummet as passengers prefer to stay at home and watch tanks guarding Heathrow on their TV. Move your main UK base from Lootin’ to Stansted. Watch Dan Air go bust. Agree with Mick privately that he will be paid 25 per cent of the annual profits of the airline in excess of £2 million. Employ 477 staff and fly 651,000 passengers, the only year of such a decrease, but for the first time ever make an annual profit of a mere £293,000.
1992
Reduce routes from nineteen to six between Ireland and the UK. Employ 507 staff and fly 945,000 passengers.
1993
Buy six second-hand Boeing 737s from Britannia. Employ 503 staff and fly 1,120,000 passengers.
1994
Appoint Mick as Chief Executive Officer. Chuck out the old BAC planes and use only Boeing 737s. Employ 523 staff and fly 1,666,000 passengers.
1995
Overtake BA and Aer Lingus to become the biggest passenger carrier on the Dublin to London route, the busiest international air route in Europe, largely due to the water, making train travel difficult and driving even more hazardous. Open your first UK domestic route, flying from Stansted to Glasgow Prestwick. Celebrate your tenth anniversary in business. Buy four Boeings from Dutch airline Transavia bringing the fleet size to eleven 737s. Employ 523 staff and fly 2,260,000 passengers.
1996
Open new routes to Leeds, Bradford, Cardiff and the Bournemouth Riviera. Buy eight more ‘slightly used with one careful owner’ Boeings from Lufthansa. The EU completes the Open Skies deregulation of airlines in Europe allowing free competition on all internal routes. Cancel Mick’s lucrative profit-sharing deal and give him 22 per cent of the airline instead. Employ 605 staff and fly 2,950,000 passengers.
1997
Jet off to the continent and start four new routes to Stockholm, Oslo, Paris and Brussels, or at least within sixty miles of these cities. Buy two more 737s bringing the fleet to 21 aircraft. Float your company on the Dublin and New York NASDAQ Stock Exchanges and watch the airline’s share price double on the first day of trading, valuing the company at €300 million. Employ 659 staff and fly 3,730,000 passengers.
1998
Open new routes to Malmo, St Etienne, Carcassonne (where?), Venice (or close), Pisa and Rimini. Order 45 new Boeings for two billion US dollars, being 25 firm orders and 20 options, an option being a sort of Irish aircraft order—sure we might buy the planes or we might not, but sure they’re only seventy million bucks a shot so sure well let you know either way later on…like. Employ 892 staff and fly 4,629,000 passengers.
1999
Go mad and open new routes to Frankfurt (close), Biarritz, Ostend (where now?), Ancona, Genoa, Turin, Derry and Aarhus. Employ 1,094 staff and fly 5,358,000 passengers.
2000
Launch an online flight booking facility which garners 50,000 bookings per week. Live with the eternal shame of one of your cabin crew named Brian Dowling winning Big Brother. Sponsor the Sky News weather forecast to raise your profile. Employ 1,262 staff and fly 7,002,000 passengers using 26 aircraft.
2001
Fly Tony Blair and family to their holidays in Carcassonne in France and milk the resultant publicity for all it is worth. Post 9/11 watch other airlines panic and oil prices soar but immediately order 100 new Boeings plus options on 50 more, the biggest aircraft order of the year. Open your first continental base at Brussels Charleroi and drive Belgium’s Sabena Airlines livid (an airline that only made a profit in one of the prior forty years and thus soon to be bankrupt and whose name stands for Such A Bad Experience, Never Again). Employ 1,467 staff and fly 9,355,000 passengers using 36 aircraft.
2002
Open your second continental base in the small peasant village of Hahn, seventy miles from Frankfurt. Start flying on 26 new routes in all. Become Europe’s number one airline in terms of punctuality, fewest cancellations and least lost luggage. Employ 1,547 staff and fly 13,419,000 passengers using 41 aircraft.
2003
Buy out a competitor, Buzz, from KLM for 24 million