The airline reported higher traffic with higher fares than the same period in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, the first time it has been achieved since the first Covid-19 lockdowns. Profit after tax jumped to 1.37 billion euros in the six months to September 30, compared with a loss of 48 million euros for the same period last year. Revenue for the period tripled to €6.6bn as it carried 95.1m passengers, up from 39.1m last year. Airlines across Europe have seen a surge in demand in recent months as countries have eased pandemic travel restrictions and customers have resumed air travel for business and leisure. Ryanair had reported profits of €203m between April and June, its first profitable spring since before the pandemic, but the chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said the strength of the acceleration since then had been unexpected and there were “strong future bookings at Christmas”. It was able to charge passengers 14% more to travel compared to the pre-pandemic period and said it would restore its crew pay levels to pre-pandemic levels on December 1 – four months earlier than expected. O’Leary told the Guardian that fares are likely to continue to rise next year, barring a resurgence of Covid or an escalation of the war preventing travel. He said that while Ryanair was growing, “the competition is all the capacity cuts – Lufthansa, IAG, Air France – are exposed to higher oil prices. If capacity continues to decline, we will see fares rise again somewhere between 5% and 10%. He said Ryanair expects high demand for air travel across Europe until 2023. “Americans are booking very strongly for next year because of the strong dollar and Asians look set to return to Europe traveling next year because of the lift of the Covid restrictions,” he added. O’Leary said there was little sign of a drop in customer numbers in the UK, Ryanair’s main market, from either climate-conscious customers or people worried about an economic downturn, which the Bank of England says has already started. Subscribe to Business Today Get ready for the business day – we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Ryanair continues to receive strong forward bookings from UK and European passengers, raising fares. O’Leary added: “We’ve been surprised: we expected like everyone else, in October fares would fall, with recession, higher interest rates, energy prices. But there’s no sign – we’re talking about a recession, but we’re basically at full employment … people are still spending.” He said the company was not worried about the impact of a recession: “Maybe they are becoming a bit more price sensitive, but that makes them fly Ryanair rather than BA or Air France.” As world leaders gather in Egypt for the Cop27 climate conference, O’Leary claimed the biggest thing European governments could do to reduce airline carbon emissions was to improve air traffic control to minimize flight distance and times. But activists and climate scientists have long argued that airlines themselves should pay higher taxes to reflect the pollution they create. Ryanair is one of the biggest corporate carbon polluters in Europe.
