Reuters
 
Brussels, Sep 14: Air transport is a stupid business and usually loss-making, the head of Irish budget airline Ryanair was quoted as saying by a Belgian weekly on Thursday. 

Asked what drove his passion for air transport, Michael O'Leary told Trends magazine: "Nothing. It's a stupid business, which generally loses a lot of money."

O'Leary said it was likely he would stay as CEO for another three or four years rather than the two or three that he had previously indicated, and suggested he might then take up farming.

"My hobby is agriculture. That's perhaps what I will do for a few years," he said, according to the text of the French-language magazine.

O'Leary said the amount of capital needed to pay for and operate a commercial fleet was one of the main elements that made the air transport business unattractive.

Ryanair uses Belgium's Charleroi airport as a regional hub. It briefly suspended flights from there last month because it wanted a guarantee there would be no more wildcat strikes, which crippled the airport on the June 15-17 weekend.