The boss of Ryanair has warned the era of ultra-low airfares is over and said Brexit is partly to blame for a shortage of airport workers that has created chaos during the peak holiday period.
The airline’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said surging oil prices would make it impossible to keep offering promotional tickets for less than €10 (£8.50). He added that Ryanair’s average fare would rise from about €40 towards €50 over the next five years as the company adjusted to rising inflation.
“I don’t think there are going to be €10 flights any more because oil prices are significantly higher as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” O’Leary told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“There’s no doubt that at the lower end of the marketplace, our really cheap promotional fares – the €1 fares, the €0.99 fares, even the €9.99 fares – I think you will not see those fares for the next number of years.”
He said that while people would continue to fly, customers would be far more “price sensitive” and hunt for bargains before they travelled, as rising food and energy bills ate into disposable income.
O’Leary called on policymakers across the UK and EU to “get inflation back down around 2%”, saying that otherwise “people’s income and people’s wealth will be very badly damaged”.
UK inflation is running at 9.4% and is expected to rise to 13.3% – its highest since 1980 – by October, according to the Bank of England’s latest forecasts.
The outspoken airline boss also hit out at the impact that Brexit was having on airlines and airports across the country, with passengers having grappled with travel chaos including long queues, rafts of cancelled flights and misplaced luggage as a result of staff shortages.
O’Leary blamed the outgoing prime minister, Boris Johnson, “and other ambitious idiots”, for creating the conditions that have left the UK in a labour crunch since departing from the EU.
“If there was much more honesty, or any honesty, from Boris Johnson’s government, they would come out and admit that Brexit has been a disaster for the free movement of labour and one of the real challenges being faced by the UK economy,” O’Leary said.
