Ryanair profits fall as passengers hold out for lower fares

Ryanair profits fell sharply this summer as passengers turned their backs on higher fares, with Europe’s largest airline admitting that it had been “over-scheduled, over-crewed and over-costed”.
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The Dublin-based airline said it was cutting its projected passenger growth next year partly because Boeing’s strikes have resulted in delays to 737 Max deliveries. It has received 172 737 Max aircraft, which are larger and more fuel-efficient than the previous generation, but is waiting for scores more.
Ryanair, which vies with easyJet to be the UK’s busiest airline, still expects to carry up to 200 million passengers in the year to March but has moderated its target for the following year from 215 million to 210 passengers.
For the first half of its financial year — the six months to the end of September — Ryanair reports an 18 per cent fall in profits after tax from €2.18 billion to €1.79 billion, despite revenues being up marginally at €8.69 billion on a 9 per cent rise in passenger numbers to 115 million.
The figures suggest that passengers are unwilling to continue paying the higher fares the airline pushed through after the pandemic, when too many travellers were chasing too few seats.
In July, August and September, Ryanair cut average fares by 7 per cent to €61.
The numbers also suggest that passengers are wising up to the airline’s ways of extracting more money from them: ancillary revenues for baggage, seats and inflight spending fell by 3.5 per cent to less than €24 per passenger.
Michael O’Leary, 63, who has been Ryanair’s chief executive for 30 years, said that there was a high risk of further Boeing delivery delays. He said: “We believe it is sensible to moderate Ryanair’s traffic growth target in the year to March 2026 to 210 million passengers [previously 215 million] to reflect these delivery delays, as we wish to avoid being over-scheduled, over-crewed and over costed as we were in summer 2024.”