Air fares to increase by 10% this summer due to lack of planes, Ryanair boss says

Boeing’s new aircraft deliveries are being delayed, Michael O’Leary says
European airlines will struggle to meet demand during the peak summer season
PA Archive

Air fares are set to be more expensive for holidaymakers this summer because of a limited amount of available planes, the boss of Ryanair has warned.

European airlines will struggle to meet demand during the peak summer season, pushing Ryanair’s ticket prices up by 10 per cent compared to summer last year, chief executive Michael O’Leary said.

The carrier’s growth in passenger numbers will be lower than expected because Boeing’s new aircraft deliveries are being delayed, he said.

Ryanair’s original forecast for the year to the end of March 2025 was that it would carry 205 million passengers, up from 183.5 million during the previous 12 months.

Mr O’Leary told reporters at the carrier’s Dublin headquarters: “With less aircraft, maybe we’ll have to bring that 205 million down towards 200 million passengers.

“It might be a scratch below 200 million, we just don’t know at this stage.

“That probably means that even our growth this year is going to be constrained in Europe, and I think that leads to a higher fare environment across Europe for summer 2024.”

He went on: “Fares in summer 2024 are going to be up again on summer 2023.

“Our average air fares in summer 2023 rose 17%.

“We don’t think we’ll see that kind of double-digit fare increase this year.

“We’re doing our budgets based on a fare increase of 5-10%, which to me feels kind of reasonable.

“It could be higher than that, it could be lower than that, we don’t really know.

“If capacity was growing, I think fares would be falling.”

Ryanair has a contract with Boeing for the delivery of 57 new planes by the end of March but he expects to have received only 40 to 45 by then.

He said the US manufacturer “has the Federal Aviation Administration (the US regulator) crawling all over them” since a Boeing 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines suffered a mid-air blowout on January 5.

Major concerns have been raised about quality control for new Boeing aircraft, sparking a limit in production speed.

Meanwhile, it was announced in July last year than more than 1,000 Pratt & Whitney-built engines would need to be removed from Airbus aircraft due to a safety recall.

Mr O’Leary predicted that airlines such as Wizz Air, Lufthansa and Air France “will be grounding upwards of 20% of their A320 fleets” because of this.

He added: “If we could get all 57 aircraft deliveries from Boeing in advance before the end of June we would make out like bandits all summer long because we have airports at the moment beating the door down to us.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in