Michael O’Leary, the outspoken chief executive of Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair, has reversed his earlier position and issued a full, unreserved apology for a highly controversial comment in which he labeled competing European airlines “high-fare rapists”. The remark, made earlier this September during a press briefing ahead of Ryanair’s annual shareholder meeting, sparked widespread public backlash and condemnation from support organizations for sexual violence survivors.
Initially, O’Leary rejected calls for an apology from the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC), the Irish non-profit that first spoke out against his language. In the days following the comment, DRCC CEO Rachel Morrogh penned an open letter to the Ryanair chief, which was obtained by the BBC, noting that multiple rape survivors had contacted the center to report feeling distressed and upset by O’Leary’s casual use of a term tied to violent sexual trauma. Morrogh accused O’Leary of deploying the inflammatory language purely to generate headlines, offered him specialized training on the far-reaching impact of sexual violence, and stressed that he would not reuse the term flippantly if he understood the experience of surviving rape.
In his initial response, O’Leary stood firm: he argued that his words did not trivialize the “heinous crime of rape”, and therefore refused both to issue an apology and to take up DRCC’s offer of training. This defiant stance only amplified public criticism, placing increasing pressure on the Ryanair leader over the course of the following 10 days.
In a pre-recorded video published Friday, O’Leary announced his change of heart, saying that conversations with family, friends, and colleagues both within and outside Ryanair had led him to recognize the harm his words caused. “I have come to realise however that the word that I used so carelessly has caused considerable upset and offence to a wide number of people, especially to victims and survivors,” he said. “I want to apologise, sincerely and unreservedly, to those people, especially to the survivors.” O’Leary described his word choice as careless, committed to avoiding similar missteps in the future, and said he intended to learn from the mistake.
This incident is far from an isolated case for O’Leary, who has built a reputation for blunt, provocative rhetoric throughout his decades leading Ryanair. In 2004, he drew similar backlash when he referred to the owners of London’s Stansted Airport as “a bunch of overcharging rapists” during a public dispute over airport user fees. He has also previously insulted his own staff by calling some “lazy bastards”, and brushed off refund-seeking passengers by saying the airline did “not want to hear your sob stories”. Just months prior in 2026, O’Leary only reluctantly agreed to end Ryanair’s policy of charging parents extra to sit next to their minor children following the launch of a regulatory watchdog investigation, while continuing to maintain the policy had been fully compliant with existing law.