Ryanair’s trademark 99p and £10 flight fare are being scrapped for a “number of years” due to soaring fuel prices, according to the budget airline’s CEO. During an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Michael O’Leary said he anticipated Ryanair’s average fare to rise by about £8 over the next five years, from £34 to roughly £42 by 2027.
The Irishman told the broadcaster : “There’s no doubt that at the lower end of the marketplace, our really cheap promotional fares – the one euro fares, the 0.99 euro fares, even the 9.99 euro fares – I think you will not see those fares for the next number of years.”
Although the soaring fuel prices which are impacting the airline’s fares are also wreaking havoc on people’s disposable incomes, Mr O’Leary is confident the number of customers will remain steady. Instead, he believes travellers will flock en masse to lower-cost alternatives such as Ryanair and EasyJet.
“We think people will continue to fly frequently,” he said. “But I think people are going to become much more price sensitive and therefore my view of life is that people will trade down in their many millions.”
Commercial flights now account for about 2.4% of global CO2 emissions, and the sector is facing pressure to reduce its impact on the climate, including campaigns to persuade people to switch to rail and road travel.
However, Mr O’Leary argued road transport and shipping were bigger contributors of CO2 overall, and said the focus on reducing emissions from air travel was “misplaced”. He said Ryanair was investing in more fuel efficient aircraft, but that greater reductions in fossil fuel use would come from the switch from petrol and diesel to electric road vehicles.
In the wake of the Covid pandemic, which severely disrupted international travel, people have proved eager to get back on board flights, report WalesOnline. But as demand for air travel has bounced back, staff shortages at airlines and airports have lead to delays and cancellations, in the UK and abroad.
Some passengers have been forced to wait for hours, or reschedule travel at the last minute. Mr O’Leary said Ryanair had managed the situation better than other airlines because it had been “part lucky and part brave” in its decision to start recruiting and training cabin crew and pilots last November when the Omicron variant was still affecting international travel.
In the first six months of 2022, Ryanair cancelled 0.3% of flights, compared with British Airways’ total of 3.5%, and Easyjet’s 2.8%, according to air travel consultancy OAG.
Mr O’Leary said he had “very little sympathy” for the airports, saying they knew schedules months in advance and that security staff, which are the responsibility of the airports, required less training than pilots.
He accused Heathrow, which has capped the number of passengers coming to the airport over the summer, of “mismanagement”. Mr O’Leary said he was “hopeful” the problems at UK airports would be resolved by next summer, but said Brexit could continue to create challenges when recruiting staff.
Ryanair is based in Dublin, but operates hundreds of routes in and out of the UK. Britain’s departure from the EU had proved to be a “disaster for the free movement of labour” Mr O’Leary said and called on the government to “be honest and own up” that it was the cause of worker shortages.
The UK labour market was “fundamentally broken” Mr O’Leary said and argued it was time for the UK to consider reversing “some of the stupidity of Brexit”. He said the priority for the next UK prime minister should be to sign a free trade deal with the EU, including free movement of labour..
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