The head of Europe’s largest airline was standing in Brussels next to a life-size cardboard cutout of Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission president, when two climate activists literally showered him with cream pies. “Welcome in Belgium,” one of the activists said. “Stop the pollution of the fucking planes.”
Michael O’Leary, Ryanair CEO, was preparing for his own protest at the European Commission headquarters, petitioning that “overflights” be protected when air traffic controllers go on strike.
“Overflights” are the term for when an aircraft passes through the airspace of a particular region. In this instance, O’Leary was petitioning European leaders to allow flights through French airspace despite ongoing air traffic control strikes in the country and across Europe that have disrupted summer air travel. Ryanair canceled over 900 flights across Europe in June as a result of the strikes, the Guardian reported. The airline has collected over 1.8 million signatures on its online petition from members of the public.
The outspoken airline boss took his pieing with good humor, “I have never had such a warm welcome,” he told local newspaper La Dernière Heure, as reported by Bloomberg. “Unfortunately it was environmentalists, and the cream was artificial. I invite passengers to come to Ireland where the cream is better!”
The low-cost airline later posted on X a picture of O’Leary with cream on his face, writing, “Instead of buying cream pies, could have bought a flight from Belgium for the same price.”
But the state of the airline industry is no laughing matter these days.
Strikes, scandals, and the sprint to net zero
The attack on O’Leary came a day after he slammed National Air Traffic Services (NATS) for a meltdown in U.K. air traffic on the heels of a technical disruption on Wednesday. A quarter of all flights to and from U.K. airports were canceled in the chaos, disrupting travel plans for an estimated 250,000 people on the U.K.’s final bank holiday of the year. Ryanair said 370 of its flights were canceled and 1,500 were delayed over the span of two days.
In a report on Wednesday, NATS cited an “extremely rare” glitch for causing the meltdown and said it would not reimburse or compensate airlines for the disruption as doing so was not within its “remit.”
O’Leary gave a fiery response in a video posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, calling the report “inaccurate and rubbish.”
Airlines are facing pressure to lower, and eventually eliminate, carbon emissions from travel, as the aviation sector produces 3% to 4% of global carbon emissions every year. And the outcry from environmentalists against airlines is nothing new. Swedish Gen Z climate activist Greta Thunberg discouraged air travel in favor of greener options, like rail travel, in the pre-pandemic “flying shame” movement.
Though clean fuel alternatives, like hydrogen-powered planes and corn-based jet fuel, are being explored in lieu of petroleum-based fuel, they remain relatively costly and have not been widely adopted. If the sector fails to meet their self-imposed sustainability targets by 2050, it could take up a quarter of the world’s “carbon budget”—a measure of total carbon emissions produced that can be used to calculate how much must be cut to reach net zero.
Another airline chief executive grabbed national headlines this week, but for an altogether less humorous reason. Alan Joyce, CEO of Australia’s Qantas, prematurely stepped down after public anger over allegedly selling seats for canceled flights—but he still banked a roughly $10 million severance.
