Ryanair Hopes to Make A Profit Again This Summer

Ryanair hopes to make a profit again this summer. More and more people are going on holiday as travel restrictions due to the corona pandemic ease worldwide, and more people are vaccinated.

 

CFO Neil Sorahan remains cautious about the final results in the current quarter, but Ryanair has been doing good business in Germany and Central and Eastern Europe lately. He is also “very hopeful for the fall”.

Last quarter, however, there was still a significant loss in the books. According to CEO Michael O’Leary, this was partly because relaxation of corona measures restricted travel more slowly than expected. Ryanair had actually hoped that a lot could be flown again by Easter. For example, the British have only been allowed to fly again since May. As a result, the company was short of 273 million euros below the line. A year ago, the loss was still 185 million euros.

Ryanair carried 8.1 million passengers in the past quarter. In the same period a year ago, that was still half a million. In August, the airline hopes to transport more than 10 million passengers. O’Leary is positive about the high vaccination rate in Europe and is counting on a “strong recovery” of aviation, hit hard by the corona crisis in the second half of this year. But he also says that this will only be possible if, as is now expected, most adult Europeans are fully vaccinated by September, and there are no further setbacks from the virus outbreak.

Ryanair hopes to be able to put the corona crisis behind it in its current broken financial year, which runs until the end of March. An important condition for this is that vaccinations ensure that the pandemic is under control. The budget fighter expects to transport more than 90 million passengers this year, the company announced. The airline previously counted on between 80 million and 120 million passengers.

Ryanair announced earlier this month that it had ordered 210 new Boeing 737-8200 aircraft. With the purchase, the airline says that it is responding to the expected lower capacity in Europe due to the corona crisis. This means there is also room for 2000 new pilots over the next three years. Ryanair expects to carry 200 million passengers by 2026.