Airline passengers seeking sunshine this summer will pay higher fares than last year, unless there are more geopolitical shocks, the boss of Ryanair predicts.
Michael O’Leary, the CEO of Europe’s biggest budget airline, told The Independent daily travel podcast: “Bookings at the moment are strong. Fares are a little bit higher than last year, but with only about 40 per cent of [capacity booked] I think it’s still fragile.
“If there’s adverse developments in Ukraine, if Trump does something stupid in the White House, if there’s terrorist attacks in cities in Europe, it could fall over again.
“But at the moment, it looks like people are booking strongly this summer and fares will creep up.
“It’ll be a little bit higher than last year. But our fares last year were 8 per cent down on the previous year. So I think we will recover some of that fare loss.”
Some Manchester-to-Tenerife flights in August on Ryanair are selling for over £500 return, such as travelling 15-30 August. But outside the school holidays it remains a buyer’s market, with some return trips from Bournemouth to Palma on Ryanair selling at £37 return in June.
Mr O’Leary, who turned 64 this week, has been chief executive of Ryanair since 1994 – almost half his life. During that time the number of passengers flown has increased by a factor of 120, reaching an annual figure of 200 million earlier this month.
But the Ryanair chief executive rejected any suggestion that he might step down, saying: “You’re joking me, what?”
“We’re on a mission to get to 300 million passengers by 2034. We’re not stopping at 200 million, we didn’t stop at 100 million.
“We have to take delivery of 336 more aircraft from Boeing, and we are well on track to get to 300 million by 2034.
“We’re going forward for intergalactic domination, and we’re never going to stop.”
The Ryanair CEO also said that the airline’s controversial new subscription scheme was being “tested”.
The annual cost of Ryanair Prime is £79. Last week Rob Burgess, founder of the frequent-flyer website Head for Points, told The Independent: “There’s no real value there for most Ryanair travellers. You want to see a very clear path to getting at least one-and-a-half, perhaps two times your money, because you’re taking a risk effectively.
“You don’t know if Ryanair will stop flying on the route you normally take. You don’t know if your travel patterns will change because you get a new job or a new partner or something else happens.”
Mr O’Leary said: “We will deliver 12 monthly seat sales, which will save subscribers more than €300 over the cost of our airfares in our system.
“So we’re testing it. I’m not sure whether it will succeed or not, but it will deliver real value to consumers.”
Kenton Jarvis, chief executive of Ryanair’s biggest rival, easyJet, refuted speculation that his airline is about to introduce a frequent flyer scheme. He said: “We’re not on the edge of launching anything. We want to make sure we learn from those out there.”
Source: independent.co.uk
