Dermot Mannion has just one crucial thing in his favour.

If he were hit by a bus, would anybody want his job?

"Very, very few people in the industry would take on that position right now, " a senior Irish airline executive told the Sunday Tribune. Like other industry figures and observers we spoke to for this story, he requested anonymity. "It would have to be someone who wanted it more for the money and would more likely be someone with bigger ambitions."

Caught between conflicting stakeholders of government, employees, Ryanair and institutional investors, Mannion's position is perilous.

To please institutional investors with dwindling patience, Mannion must deliver further cost efficiencies and growth. Analysts estimate that costs, currently 80 per passenger, need to fall to 60- 65 per passenger, roughly equivalent to lowcost airline EasyJet, for Aer Lingus to be competitive.

"It's Mission Impossible, " said a fund manager. "It's hard to see how anybody could deliver."

The pressure to cut costs has been mounting, Aer Lingus commercial director Enda Corneille told the Sunday Tribune.

"The question has been asked of us at the roadshow and the response to our answer has been, more or less, 'don't come back here unless you've delivered. We as the shareholders need this to be delivered. This is critical', " said Corneille.

"'You benchmarked all your terms and conditions. They are clearly out of whack. If you want to be competing with the best of the rest you need a cost base that's close to the best of the rest because certainly your prices are going to have to be because the customer won't pay any more.'" A confrontation now with unions may seem painful but may be necessary to ever achieve the hoped-for growth.

"A decisive battle with the unions is exactly what he should be doing, " said a Dublin-based analyst. "It can't happen between May and September. The timing is good."

Enda Corneille seemed to see a decisive battle as preferable. "Dermot Mannion as chief executive needs to know that the staff who report to him will carry out the roles he requires of them rather than them reporting to [IALPA president] Evan Cullen."

And if there is industrial action, Aer Lingus is well armed for battle. "Let's say they close for a week, " said another analyst. "It costs them 30m to 40m. It's a good percentage of their profits. But they are sitting on 800m net cash."

"The more noise now the better, " the analyst added.

"Mannion's got to think, let's go all the way. In that sense, there is logic in his approach."

But commentators and investors may be blinded, an academic warned, by our unrealistic expectations about what one executive can do.

"It's the Clint Eastwood model of leadership, " said Prof John Murray, a senior business lecturer at Trinity College Dublin. "He rides into town to fix things." Rarely are things that simple, however.

"A lot of complex change processes take more than one generation of chief executive, " said Prof Murray.

British Airways went through a string of chief executives after privatised by the Thatcher government, going through a string of chief executives and nearannual spasms of industrial unrest before former Aer Lingus chief Willie Walsh took over. And BA didn't have a vestigial government shareholder or a predator on its share registry.

Oil major BP also went through a string of chief executives before the relatively stable period under Lord Browne.

"Now is probably the most difficult time for any chief executive to run Aer Lingus in 10-15 years, " said the airline executive. "Ryanair is gunning for him, and he's running a publicly quoted company but has to deal with a lot of political pressure from vested interests within and without that most other [bosses] wouldn't have to."