"He’s always been cuddly, you see. Every morning he used give me a hug and wish me well for the day and now it’s an even longer hug and sometimes he brings me in a packet of sweets and asks me how my day was. At the end of the day, we all hold hands and sing the company song.”

This is what Robin Kiely, head of communications in Ryanair, has to say about working with Michael O’Leary. We don’t think O’Leary gives out too many hugs, but if anyone deserves one, it’s Robin. His job is to manage Ryanair’s reputation in the media.

“Lufthansa are on strike that’s always good news,” Robin remarks as he leafs through press clippings during Country Living’s visit. Robin’s job involves everything from sending out press releases across 30 countries, managing announcements of the company’s results, writing for the in-flight magazine (which boasts a readership of 90 million) and writing the script for the Christmas flight landing song.

And then there’s dealing with journalists. Ryanair’s press office receives about 200 emails a day. Three particular subjects always crop up: transatlantic flights, standing on aeroplanes (“which is never going to happen”) and paying to use the toilet.

“Thankfully you’ll continue to be able to pee for free on Ryanair,” says Robin.

He takes us on a tour of Ryanair HQ. A table in one meeting room is made from an aircraft engine and there are young, navy-suited pilots everywhere. The reception area is home to the infamous slide and the chairs are seats from the Ryanair planes.

Ryanair HQ was Google-ified nine months ago when they moved to a new premises and installed a games room, life-size chess set and indoor mini golf. The walls in each section are covered in tapestries depicting everything from cows, to Lego men and minions, while the press office has a huge image of Spiderman as its backdrop “because we spin a web of lies!”.

Destined for media

So, how did Robin arrive at what some would consider the toughest job on the planet? It would seem he was always destined to work in the media. His uncle is Leslie Horgan, former head of production with the Farmers Journal. His dad was a journalist, his sister works for RTÉ and his granddad formed the first independent PR company in Ireland.

Robin wanted to be a sports reporter and after his Leaving Cert completed a PLC course in journalism in Coláiste Dúlaigh.

A big rugby fan, he also completed many coaching courses and got a job as a development officer with the IRFU and later worked with Clontarf and Swords rugby clubs. All the while he was freelancing as a sports reporter.

He got a job as a news reporter with the Fingal Independent and after five and a half years made the move to PR and Ryanair, joining a team that had just one other person: his boss. When said boss left for the IRFU nine months later, Robin was made head of communications.

“It’s a constant wave of good news and improvements,” remarks Robin at the start of the interview, and this sums up the tone of my chat with the King of Spindoctoring. He throws a lot of figures at me: Ryanair is connecting 1,600 routes between 183 airports in 30 countries.

“Most Irish people ... think Aer Lingus is the same size as Ryanair, but the reality is we carried 90 million people this year. Aer Lingus might carry just under 10, so we’re the biggest airline in Europe and we actually carry more international passengers – passengers across borders – than any other airline in the world, so we are technically the world’s biggest international airline.”

Up in the air

Country Living gets a practical demonstration of the scale of Ryanair on a visit to the flight operations room. There, on a massive screen, a map of Europe is dotted with pink planes, each representing a Ryanair flight currently airborne. Robin introduces me to two very jovial flight operations controllers who are monitoring all the flights.

“Ring that captain and ask him what he’s doing,” instructs one. They’re in the process of diverting a plane from Rzeszow to Krakow. They zoom in on Poland to show me why. The plane is currently circling above Rzeszow airport trying to land, its trail of laps marked on the screen in psychedelic blue. But there’s too much fog. The controller makes the call and next thing the plane on screen changes direction, heading towards Krakow.

“This must be stressful for you,” I remark, only to be informed “stressful” is when there’s bad weather in Stansted and 20 flights are trying to get in and out.

Ryanair has ambitious plans for growth. The airline currently has a fleet of 300 aircraft and expects to have 520 by 2024, with plans to carry 150 million passengers a year. Ryanair says this will create 10,000 jobs over the next five to 10 years (the airline already has a workforce of 10,000 across Europe).

The proportion of these in Ireland will depend on how many new aircraft are put here, as each aircraft creates about 50 jobs. At the moment, Ryanair’s digital hub – Ryanair Labs – has created 200 jobs, half of which have been filled already.

Transatlantic

Ryanair’s focus is very much on Europe at the moment

“If you look across Europe, we only have about 12-14% of the market share ... we’re really focusing on that now,” says Robin.

He says that Ryanair flights to America are three to five years away “at the earliest”.

“Our plan would be to fly from about 14 airports in Europe to 14 airports in the States on the east and west coasts, but in order to do that properly you have to get a fleet of about 30 or 40 long-haul aircraft.

“The problem is the gulf carriers – the likes of Etihad, Emirates and Qatar Airways – have bought up all of the long-haul aircraft for the next five to 10 years ... so until we can get aircraft suitable for long-haul, and enough to operate a viable operation, with those sort of airports on each side – until we can do that at a reasonable price, we won’t be doing long-haul yet.”

In the past year, Ryanair has focused on improving their current offering – and it’s made Robin’s life a lot easier.

“Horror stories that would have been predominantly a lot of my role in the past have completely dropped down so it’s a completely different job to when I first started. What we’ve done in the last year is try to fix all the things that people don’t like about us,” says Robin.

Ryanair’s programme of change, the always getting better programme, sees Ryanair being nicer to its passengers, and it seems to be paying off, with traffic up 22% this Novmeber compared to the same month in 2013. Their new strategy is also seeing Michael O’Leary take a step back from day-to-day media.

“We said this week he’s looking to take on a more presidential role and we would see that as him being the figurehead of the company ... but we don’t need to send Michael to every airport in Europe dressed up as a chicken, saying controversial stuff just purely to get hits on our website ... Michael and Ryanair are so intrinsically linked that it almost came down to the point where if you didn’t like Michael, you might not fly with Ryanair. He will still do things, but it’s not like he is the entire company. You’ll get a mix of Ryanair faces and voices.”

While Ryanair may have gone all cuddly, the customer is always right still doesn’t fly with Ryanair.

“I mean, a lot of those customer stories in the past – you’d be surprised how many of them are actually the fault of the customer,” contends Robin. “You know people who don’t print out their boarding cards when they’re told they need to print out their boarding cards, when they’re sent an email reminder three times and they’re sent a text message ... and then they go to the airport and go ‘I can’t believe Ryanair charged me because I didn’t print out my boarding card’.”

Have any of Michael O’Leary’s public utterances caused Robin Kiely major headaches? He claims they haven’t.

“The only thing ... is just the constant abuse for being a Liverpool fan and him being a Man City fan, especially the day after Man City won the league and I had to sit beside him on a flight to Poland as he read all the sports newspapers.”

There’s no doubt Robin’s gig is a tough one. He does 200 to 300 Ryanair flights a year, which is not easy on his young son.

“But he’s kind of used to it now. Once I bring him home a suitable Lego present; you usually just buy back his love and affection ... it can be [tough] sometimes but at the same time you’re flying across Europe to go and do PR – anyone would be mad not to love a job like that.”