Maybe the newly contrite Michael O’Leary will bring a swear jar to work in Ryanair’s head office. A fiver in the pot for every bad word uttered. Maybe he’ll rebrand the company as “the airline that likes to be nice” and spend the proceeds from the jar on free flights for passengers.

And maybe pigs will fly higher than his 737s.

There was the soberness of the convert about O’Leary in last weekend’s video that even the sunflowers in the background could not edify. He looked like the familiarly flippant Mick. The sleeves of his Ralph Lauren shirt were pushed up, the collar unbuttoned, but he was stumbling over words as if they were trying to choke him. He appeared to be reading from an autocue. Most sensationally, he was apologising.

Having adamantly refused to retract his comment that rival airlines were “high-fare rapists” and spurning the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre’s offer of education about the harm caused by trivialising language, here he was saying a “sincere and unreserved” sorry.

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“In conversations with family and friends both inside and outside Ryanair over the last 10 days, I have come to realise, however, that the word that I used so carelessly has caused considerable upset and offence to a wide number of people, especially to victims and survivors,” he said in the........

© The Irish Times