Ryanair has agreed to keep Michael O’Leary as group CEO until April 2032, a deal that will push his tenure toward four decades. By the time the contract ends, he’ll have been at the airline for 44 years, with 38 of those in the top job. It’s an impressive run in any industry, but all the more remarkable given the increasingly cut-throat nature of commercial aviation.
In the past 12 months alone, there have been CEO overhauls at major carriers, including Air India, IndiGo, Turkish Airlines, Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Frontier, Avianca, and Malaysia Airlines. Some exits were officially planned years in advance. Others were boards reacting to black swan events they couldn’t ignore.
The era when airlines could reasonably expect to keep the same leader for more than a decade is becoming the exception rather than the rule. Yet, an elite group of executives still hold the line.
Since taking charge of Ryanair in 1994, O’Leary has overseen its transformatio