EXCLUSIVE: Kilkenny pilot George O'Hara reflects on his storied career in Ryanair

There were unusual scenes at Kerry Airport last month when a Ryanair flight captained by Kilkenny pilot George O’Hara arrived on the runway.

The flight was met by two fire rescue vehicle who gave it an effective guard of honour as it they sprayed their hoses over the top of the plane. 

The gesture was to mark the penultimate flight of Captain George O’Hara, Ryanair’s most senior pilot, as he capped off an almost four-decade career with the airline.

George is a proud Kilkenny man, who hails from Saint Francis Terrace in Kilkenny City. He is hoping that his story will help inspire other young people to pursue their dreams in aviation.

“The airfield in Kilkenny was set up with an entrepreneurial spirit,” George explained.

“You had Martin Mulhall of Mulhall’s Bakery heavily involved. There was Dan Smithwick, Edwin Stallard and Pat Nolan and some others who really got behind the endeavour.

“A friend of mine actually worked on the building of the little tower that’s there, he was a builder and also worked in Ryanair at one stage too.

“I started going out to the airfield around 1978. There used to be fly-ins there, open days during the summertime. The Aer Arann islander aircraft used to bring people up on flights.

“My father was big into aviation and so was my eldest brother so that first ever flight on the islander really stuck with me. I was about twelve at the time and the interest has stayed with me ever since.”

George started his flying pursuits on gliders, and worked his way up from there, enjoying the nuances of every aircraft he had the privilege to captain.

“Bit by bit I started to do a bit more,” he continues.

“I did my instructor rating in Dublin, at Dublin Airport Flying Club. My night rating was next and then the instrument rating and then the commercial pilot licence.

“From there, my job in Ryanair came along. The airline started in about 1985 and they were advertising for a pilot for their Bandeirante, a small twin-turboprop doing flights to Coventry at night.

“They were going to put me on that when I started in the late 80s but they put me on the ATR, and from then on there have been changes but I stayed through them all.”

Few could have predicted the immense growth of Ryanair in those days, even George, and he has witnessed so much of the story of the airline firsthand.

“When I started in Ryanair the main route was Waterford to Luton on the Hawker Siddeley 748, which was an old airplane but it did the job.

“Then they decided to make an investment. They were going to buy 11 ATRs and ended up with three, which served Galway, Kerry and Waterford. Each one of them landed in each place every night.

“We used to fly a lot in Germany, places like Dresden, Dortmund, and Leipzig. Some of these places looked like they hadn’t been touched since 1944 at the time. Another airport was Tempelhof in Berlin, which is closed now. It had acquired iconic status as the centre of the Berlin Airlift of 1948–49.”

Captain O’Hara says that given the volatility of the aviation industry at the time, it was a hard time for the Ryan family to know how to make money, or come to any firm realisation on the best way to take the airline.

“One day we got a call asking if we’d go to Toronto on Monday. This was a Thursday at the time. We were told that Tony Ryan was thinking of buying ten or eleven Dash-8s (De Havilland Canada Dash 8s) and was thinking of starting an airline up in Bremen.

“So we flew over and were there for Monday, started a flight safety course and got a call on Thursday to say that he had changed his mind and wasn’t going to proceed with the purchase of these aircraft. But that was the airline back then. Tony was a true entrepreneur.

“When they retired the ATRs I was lucky in a way because I had seniority and they put us back on the BAC One-Elevens.

“Then the Boeing 737-200s came along. They were all secondhand airplanes but they were a gamechanger.

“They made a difference and most importantly they made money, even though they were secondhand. That changed things for Ryanair and I’ve been lucky enough to pilot so many wonderful aircraft, all the way up to the recent Boeing 737 Max aircraft, a wonderful plane to fly.”

On his last day flying a commercial aircraft, Captain O’Hara explained how it was only natural for emotions to be high.

“My wife and four children were on the plane and my eldest brother was on the plane as well as my nephew Kevin, who is also a pilot.

“I made sure to tell the passengers when we were passing over Kilkenny on the way down.

“It was an emotional but rewarding day and we finished the night in Kealy’s Pub up at Dublin Airport, it was a great time.”

Captain O’Hara is advising people in Kilkenny who are interested in getting into aviation to experience flying in a light aircraft first and see how they get on.

“My first experience was going up with Martin Mulhall and he threw it around a little bit. I was actually quite nauseous getting off,” he laughed.

“The first thing a lot of people say is that it’s far too expensive to do. For me, I went to the Credit Union in Kilkenny. They were really good. Any time I needed money they gave it to me whereas the banks unfortunately ran me out the door.

“You can also approach it gradually over time. You don’t have to do it all in the one go. One girl I know set up a fundraiser and she comes from a place with great community support and that’s helping her manage it.

“You have to have a lot of stickability to do it modularly, there’s a lot of hurdles, but you get there eventually.”

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