Michael Cawley

From 2002 to 2014, Michael Cowley served as Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Ryanair, the largest airline in Europe. Michael joined the airline in 1997 as the Chief Operating Officer before the company went public. Afterwards, he focused on participating and ensuring that the company completed its listing on the Dublin, London, and Nasdaq stock exchanges. When Cowley first joined Ryanair, the company had only 9 planes and 8 routes, with an annual passenger capacity of less than 3 million. However, in the year before his departure, the airline expanded to have 300 aircraft, operate 1600 routes, and carry 82 million passengers. During his tenure, Ryanair's market value increased from 400 million euros to over 10 billion euros. Kaoli played a core role in the planning and execution process of achieving this development in the company. As the second leader of the company, he participated in the formulation of all major strategic decisions from 1997 to 2014, which completely changed the development landscape of European air travel. He vigorously expands the company's commercial business, selects suitable candidate airports and negotiates with them, designs and operates the most profitable European airline network, making him the person with the most sideline revenue in the world. Cowley previously worked for Gowan Group, the largest private company in Ireland, in the automotive distribution business. Prior to this, he led a management acquisition project within Athlone Extrusions, a plastic manufacturer. Cowley is a certified public accountant who pursued a business major at Cork University for his undergraduate studies. During his university years, he gave speeches in accounting. He has delivered speeches on tourism, aviation business, management, strategy, and financing in various regions of Europe, Africa, and the United States. After retiring from Ryanair, Mike was appointed as the Chairman of the Irish National Tourism Development Authority, the Irish Tourism Authority, and is now a non-executive director of several companies, including Ryanair and Paddy Ball Public Limited.