Yahoo Finance Michael O’Leary brands French finance minister ‘stupid’ in Boeing safety row
The boss of Ryanair has compared France’s finance minister to Donald Trump after he gave a “silly and ill-advised” criticism of plane maker Boeing.
Michael O’Leary branded Bruno Le Maire a “stupid politician” for saying he hesitates to travel on Boeing aircraft because he values his life.
Mr Le Maire drew laughter and applause from a conference audience this week when he said he preferred “the situation of Airbus to Boeing’s” following the midair blowout on an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this year.
He told the Europe 2024 conference in Berlin: “I now prefer flying in Airbus over Boeing — my family too, they care about me.”
Mr O’Leary told Politico that Mr Le Maire’s words were “silly and ill-judged” but “we live in a world where we encourage free speech and Donald Trump is talking rubbish. So is Bruno Le Maire”.
He said that his message to “some stupid politician going, ‘My family don’t feel safe on a 737’ [was] ‘Well then, try flying on an Airbus with a problem with the engine that hasn’t been repaired.’”
Last year one of Ryanair’s biggest low-cost rivals, Wizz Air, said it expected 45 of its 180-strong Airbus A320 fleet would be grounded for months because of engine problems.
The French government is the biggest single shareholder in Airbus, the arch rival of Boeing.
The US plane manufacturer has been in crisis since a refrigerator-sized hole opened up in a plane mid-flight in January. The blowout was linked to loose bolts and led the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to ground all Boeing 737 Max 9 planes with a door plug.
A six-week investigation by the FAA, published this month, found “multiple instances” where Boeing and one of its suppliers “allegedly failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements”.
Meanwhile, Ryanair warned this month that it would be forced to put up ticket prices this summer as it grapples with delays to deliveries of new aircraft from Boeing.
The low-cost airline said the plane maker now expects to deliver just 40 of the 57 B737-MAX8200 aircraft that had been expected to arrive by the end of June.
In the latest blow to the manufacturer, Deutsche Bank on Thursday slashed its forecasts for underlying profits at Boeing by 91pc to $238m (£187m) from $2.7bn.
Analysts said the company is “taking its medicine” and warned of “near-term headwinds to production, deliveries, and working capital”.
Boeing said it was “implementing changes to strengthen quality across our production system and taking the necessary time to deliver high-quality airplanes that meet all regulatory requirements”.
