Ryanair is the most profitable carrier in the world and now aims to become Europe's largest airline by 2012, carrying more than 70m passengers a year. Can the Ryanair success story continue, or will the dash for growth tempt management to alter a winning strategy? The airline's philosophy is summed up by the quote from Michael O'Leary, Ryanair CEO, that: "Our strategy is like Wal-Mart - we pile it high and sell it cheap." But it didn't start out that way. Ryanair was set up by the Ryan family in 1985 as a conventional airl.ine with turboprop aircraft and 25 staff. But by the end of the decade, despite the introduction of jet aircraft, the building up of a network between Ireland and the UK, and attempts to launch an FFP and a business class service, Ryanair had accumulated ?30m in losses in the face of fierce competition from Aer Lingus and British Airways.
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