Aviation: Ryanair with first quarterly profit since the beginning of the pandemic

air traffic
Ryanair with first quarterly profit since the beginning of the pandemic

The Irish low-cost airline Ryanair has made a quarterly profit for the first time since the beginning of the corona pandemic. After a loss of 225.5 million euros in the comparable period, there was now a profit of 225 million euros for the months of July to September, as the Easyjet rival announced in Dublin.

In the past few weeks, customers have increasingly booked tickets. Management expects this dynamic to continue until Easter and summer next year. In the second fiscal quarter (until the end of September), Ryanair earned almost € 1.8 billion, almost 70 percent more than in the same period of the previous year.

However, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary distanced himself from his previous forecast of a small annual loss or at best a result close to the zero line: The loss for the current financial year (until the end of March 2022) is now expected to be between 100 million and 200 million euros. That depends mainly on the price development in winter.

If necessary, the management wants to boost ticket sales itself by lowering prices. The number of passengers for the year should now be more than 100 million, after 90 to 100 million so far.

In the next five years, the company also wants to create around 5,000 new jobs and transport around 225 million passengers a year. That is 25 million more than previously communicated. Ryanair is also relying on the use of the new Boeing 737 Max: By summer 2022, more than 65 aircraft are to belong to the Ryanair fleet. That would be 5 more than previously communicated.

Ryanair is considering withdrawing from the London Stock Exchange. In the course of Brexit, the volume of shares traded fell significantly, it was said to justify. In December, the airline banned all non-EU citizens from buying common shares and canceled their voting rights.

dpa