Malaysia Air CEO Bellew To Rejoin Ryanair

Malaysia Airlines chief executive Peter Bellew is leaving to join Ryanair as Chief Operations Officer, just over two years after moving from the Irish airline.

Bellew worked at Ryanair from 2006 until he was appointed COO at Malaysia Air in 2015 and promoted to chief executive the following year. He will take up his new position in Dublin on December 1.

Ryanair said he will take over responsibility for the airline’s flight operations, ground operations and engineering “but with a specific responsibility for pilot production, training and career development.”

“Peter will lead a significant transformation in the way we reward and interact with our pilots, improve their working environment and career development over the coming years as we grow the fleet to some 600 aircraft,” Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said.

Malaysia Airlines was less impressed by the “unexpected announcement”, saying Bellew had expressed his commitment to the airline and stated that the turnaround of Malaysia Airlines would be “the greatest achievement” of his life.

Ryanair is keen to move on from the public relations disaster of the last few months when it cancelled over 20,000 flights. The situation was partly caused by the airline moving its leave year for flight crew from April-March to January-December next year. For 2017, annual pilot leave had to be crammed into the nine months between April and December, leading to the shortage of available pilots.

Bellew appears to have had a good relationship with Ryanair pilots when he was Director of Flight Operations, he will now be responsible for navigating the airline and its pilots to calmer air.