Watch | Ryanair CEO hit with cream cakes by climate activists. He reacts
File photo.
Ryanair's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Michael O'Leary was on Thursday (September 7) hit with cream cakes by two women environmental activists who were protesting in Brussels about the impact of air travel on climate change. O'Leary visited the European Commission with a cardboard cutout of President Ursula von der Leyen to deliver a passenger petition calling for overflights to be protected during air traffic control strikes when he was targeted by the stunt. He was about to hold a press conference.
The video of the incident showed an activist approaching O'Leary and said, "Welcome to Belgium before she smeared the cream cake in his face. The activist then shouted,"Stop the pollution of the f****** planes," as a second activist threw another pie in his face.
The Ryanair CEO was uninjured and tried to laugh off the incident and started with the press conference. "No, we're here to discuss the petition. I love cream cakes. They're my favourite," O'Leary told reporters.
Ryanair, meanwhile, went on a meme spree on X (formerly known as Twitter) to describe the incident. "Warm welcome in Brussels today to celebrate RYR’s 7 new routes for Winter 23. "Passengers so happy with our routes and petition that they’re celebrating with cake. We’ve got tasty low fares!," the airline said in a post.
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O'Leary said that he was in Brussels to submit Ryanair's latest passenger petition to Ursula von der Leyen, and the number of signatories increased. "We submitted the first petition about six months ago, when we had only 1 million signatories, now 1.5 million signatories have signed our petition calling on Ursula von der Leyen and the European Commission to take action to protect overflights during strikes," the Ryanair CEO further said.
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