Last week I wrote about what I found to be an interesting development at Ryanair.
Peter Bellew used to work for Malaysia Airlines — he was the COO starting in 2015, and became the CEO in 2016. A bit over a year later he quit to move to Ryanair, where he became the COO.
As he said at the time, “they need my help there is a big challenge. It is a form of national service.”
That’s why it was interesting to learn last week that Bellew will be leaving Ryanair at the end of the year. More details weren’t provided, though I imagined there was likely more to the story.
Did he have another job opportunity elsewhere, did he not see a future at Ryanair, or what? Interestingly his announcement came the same day that Norwegian’s CEO announced his resignation, leading many to believe that maybe he was taking over that role at the airline.
Well, we now know more about Bellew’s future, and it doesn’t involve Norwegian.
EasyJet has announced that Peter Bellew will become their new COO. As of now few other details are known, like when he’ll start the job.
Suffice to say that this is an interesting development. He was the CEO at Malaysia Airlines, he then became COO at Ryanair, and now he’s taking on a similar role at EasyJet. EasyJet and Ryanair are roughly the same size (Ryanair is a bit bigger), though EasyJet certainly isn’t as much of a mess as Ryanair was a couple of years ago when Bellew joined.
I’d be very curious to know what’s going on behind the scenes here. Bellew claimed that he had been looking for other opportunities, which leads me to believe he didn’t see any further advancement opportunities at Ryanair.
Ryanair right now is breaking up the airline into multiple business units, with Michael O’Leary overseeing the entire group. I wouldn’t be surprised if for whatever reason Bellew wasn’t offered anything better, and he decided his time was up at the airline.
I have a lot of respect for Bellew, and wish him all the best at EasyJet.
Pter Bellew 's wealth of experience with Malaysian Airlines & especially RyanAir will be extremely useful for Easyjet i believe.
RyanAir has been targeting poorer European passengers (students,travelers from Ukraine,Morrocco etc) than Easyjet which has been targeting middle-class and lower middle class passengers but when it comes to making money & expanding as a business RyanAir has been better than Easyjet.
So it might change with P.Bellew running now Easyjet .
Pter Bellew 's wealth of experience with Malaysian Airlines & especially RyanAir will be extremely useful for Easyjet i believe.
RyanAir has been targeting poorer European passengers (students,travelers from Ukraine,Morrocco etc) than Easyjet which has been targeting middle-class and lower middle class passengers but when it comes to making money & expanding as a business RyanAir has been better than Easyjet.
So it might change with P.Bellew running now Easyjet .
Interesting side note
It'll be interesting to see how he goes from and airline operating the 737 Family to the a320 family.
Will he be able to notice the difference in costing for each aircraft and is IAG exaggerating when Willie Walsh said about the delays from Airbus.
Also didn't both Ryanair and easyjet look into Alitalia and airberlin?
So I wonder if Peter knows roughly what Ryanair offers in terms of...
Interesting side note
It'll be interesting to see how he goes from and airline operating the 737 Family to the a320 family.
Will he be able to notice the difference in costing for each aircraft and is IAG exaggerating when Willie Walsh said about the delays from Airbus.
Also didn't both Ryanair and easyjet look into Alitalia and airberlin?
So I wonder if Peter knows roughly what Ryanair offers in terms of acquisitions and if they have any plans for further expansion which he'd be able to leverage easyjet to compete for.
Ever notice that departing CEOs of Malaysian make very sudden trips back to their home countries?
Putting aviation enthusiasm aside, Easyjet plc is less than half the market cap of Ryanair plc. Maybe he sees some opportunity here to double the business more easily?
Hey Ben, you know Peter was working at Ryanair for years before he joined Malaysia Airlines? So in fact, he returned to Ryanair, rather than joining it.