Ryanair is an Irish ultra low-cost airline group headquartered in Swords, Dublin , Ireland. Ryanair DAC, the oldest airline of the group, was founded in Ryanair has been characterised by its rapid expansion, a result of the deregulation of the aviation industry in Europe in and the success of its low-cost business model. The group operates more than planes. The company has at times been criticised for its refusal to issue invoices for the VAT-exempt services it provides airfares , [ 22 ] poor working conditions, [ 23 ] [ 24 ] [ 25 ] heavy use of extra charges, [ 26 ] [ 27 ] [ 28 ] poor customer service, [ 29 ] [ 30 ] and tendency to intentionally generate controversy in order to gain publicity.
Since its establishment in , [ 11 ] Ryanair has grown from a small airline, flying the short journey from Waterford to London Gatwick , into Europe's largest carrier. There have been over 19, people working for the company, most employed and contracted by agencies to fly on Ryanair aircraft. The airline went public in , [ 36 ] and the money raised was used to expand the airline into a pan-European carrier.
The first chief executive was Eugene O'Neill β , who had formerly worked as managing director of Ryan's Sunday Tribune newspaper and as Ryan's personal assistant. O'Neill was talented at marketing but did not focus on costs, and the airline lost money in its early years. Ryan vetoed O'Neill's proposal to take Aer Lingus to the European Commission for breach of competition rules, because at the time Aer Lingus was state-owned and Ryanair depended on the Irish government for its route licences.
Under partial European Economic Community EEC deregulation, airlines could begin new international intra-EEC services as long as one of the two governments approved the so-called "double-disapproval" regime. The Irish government at the time refused its approval to protect Aer Lingus , but Britain, under Margaret Thatcher 's deregulating Conservative government, approved the service.
With two routes and two aircraft, the fledgling airline carried 82, passengers in one year. From , this provided a connection with the Luton Ryanair service onward to Amsterdam and Brussels. Due to decreasing profits, the company restructured in , copying the low-fares model of Southwest Airlines , after O'Leary visited the company. The objective of a minute turnaround enabled aircraft to make more flights per day. According to O'Leary, lower fares attracted new customers to air travel, rather than Ryanair competing directly with other airlines for passengers.
