The only threat to Ryanair's dominance of the low-fare airline business in Europe would come from any ill-discipline from managers within the company, its chief executive said yesterday.

Mr Michael O'Leary said he was satisfied no other carrier would be able to compete with Ryanair on price. But he said managers should stay loyal to the strategy, which had driven the company's success - i.e. growing it while cutting costs.

"It will only keep working if we keep driving it forward," he said during a discussion at a Dow Jones conference in Dublin.

Difficulties encountered by the company in 1991 when its future looked doubtful underlined this imperative, he said.

Asked "what keeps you awake at night?", Mr O'Leary cited fear of an accident and threats to the carrier's management culture from within. "What will screw it up is us - not any competitor."

No one in the industry could discount the risk of an accident, Mr O'Leary said. Statistics showed that most were caused by human error. "It's going to be somebody doing something stupid they shouldn't do. The best you can to do is to eliminate human error."

Should an accident occur, Mr O'Leary said management would have no option but to work a way through it.

On the failure of the proposed merger between British Airways and the Dutch carrier KLM, Mr O'Leary said the deal would have been beneficial to the industry in breaking down regulatory barriers. Citing developments in the deregulated telecommunications business, he said: "Why airlines haven't gone the same way is just a mystery."

Mr O'Leary said he favoured European states embracing US economic and management standards. He accepted there were claims that the US authorities practised "unbridled" capitalism. But he added: "I'm very impressed that what would be portrayed as this great capitalist nation is the only one that had the balls to challenge Microsoft."

While Mr O'Leary said he had not studied the case in detail, he said the Government in the Republic would be unwilling to launch a similar challenge.

He criticised the State's road and airport infrastructure and the Government's immigration policy, but said he was confident its commitment to reduce corporate tax to 12.5 per cent would encourage other companies to base operations in the Republic.

The management of transport deregulation by the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, was "disastrous", Mr O'Leary claimed.

Ms O'Rourke's proposals to relieve congestion in the terminals at Dublin Airport were not helpful, he said.