New passengers for low-cost airlines
Ryanair wants to attract customers with discounts
May 20, 2024, 10:06 a.m
If you want to travel with Ryanair, you can hope for discounts. The low-cost airline wants to boost its numbers in the weaker first quarter. However, bargain hunters should hurry up, because the summer season starts in July – and prices could rise again.
Europe’s largest low-cost airline Ryanair wants to compete for customers with discounts and boost ticket sales. The company in Dublin announced that the first financial quarter until the end of June required more discounts than in the previous year because the Easter holidays, which were busy with travel, partly fell in March. However, the board is cautiously optimistic that it will be able to offer prices at least at the previous year’s level during the peak summer travel season – but it may also be possible to push through slightly higher prices, emphasized the Easyjet competitor.
The profit forecast for the year as a whole depends heavily on how much Ryanair can charge its passengers between July and September. Management did not dare to give a precise profit forecast. Ryanair also warned of the risk that the delivery of Boeing aircraft could be further delayed. By the end of July, the board hopes to have a fleet of a total of 158 medium-haul jets from the 737 Max series. That would be 23 copies less than agreed. In recent months, Ryanair has had to cancel flights and reduce its passenger forecast due to delivery delays.
The war between Israel and Hamas also led to almost 950 flight cancellations. The past financial year was also marked by strikes by European air traffic controllers. Nevertheless, 183.7 million passengers flew with Ryanair in the last financial year – which was nine percent more than in the previous year and 23 percent more than before the corona pandemic. The load factor – a measure of the utilization of an aircraft – was 94 percent compared to 93 percent in the previous year.
The bottom line is that Ryanair’s profit increased by almost half to around 1.9 billion euros compared to the previous year. Ryanair also announced a 700 million euro share buyback. The company wants to increase the number of passengers by eight percent to 198 million to 200 million passengers in the current financial year.