Ryanair’s passenger figures soar as travellers ditchBA for budget rivals
BUDGET airline Ryanair carried 6.16m passengers in October, 15 per cent more than a year ago, while the average flight was just as full, it said yesterday.
Its load factor – an indication of how full its planes are – was unchanged from a year ago at 85 per cent.
Carriers around the world have been losing customers as holiday-goers and businesses cut back in the recession. But Ryanair has bucked the trend by offering bargain-basement flight deals.
The news came a day after the carrier’s chief executive Michael O’Leary threatened to water down aggressive growth plans if he failed to negotiate a better deal with Boeing.
It wants to buy up to 200 planes from the US company, but said it would rather return money to investors than buying jets at too high a price.
O’Leary said there was “no point in continuing to grow rapidly in a declining yield environment where our main aircraft partner is unwilling to play its part in our cost reduction programme”.
As a major shareholder of Ryanair, with five per cent of the stock, O’Leary stands to be one of the biggest beneficiaries if it does pay out dividends.
Earlier in the week, the airline said six month pre-tax profits had risen to €419.4m (£376.2m), up from €105.2m in the same period last year.