European low-cost carrier Ryanair returned to profit in the last quarter but has warned about the “fragile” state of the airline market.
The Ireland-based airline group, which also owns Buzz, Lauda and Malta Air, made a net profit of €170 million for the quarter ending on June 30, compared with a loss of €273 million during the same period last year.
Passenger numbers for the quarter rose by 461 per cent from 8.1 million to 45.5 million year-on-year and revenue went up from €370 million in 2021 to €2.6 billion this year.
But Ryanair added that Easter prices had been “badly damaged” by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with average fares down by 4 per cent on pre-Covid levels during the April-June quarter.
Ancillary revenues continued to “perform strongly” for Ryanair and averaged more than €22.50 per passenger in the quarter. This brought in just over €1 billion in revenue for the airline through selling services such as priority boarding, reserved seating and in-flight sales.
Ryanair’s group CEO Michael O’Leary said that while there were “clear signs of pent-up demand”, bookings were still being made later compared with pre-Covid trends. He added that fares for the quarter from July to September were currently “tracking” ahead of 2019 figures by a “low double-digit percentage”.
“While we remain hopeful that the high rate of vaccinations in Europe will allow the airline and tourism industry to fully recover and finally put Covid behind us, we cannot ignore the risk of new Covid variants in autumn 2022,” added O’Leary.
“Our experience with Omicron last November and the Ukraine invasion in February shows how fragile the air travel market remains, and the strength of any recovery will be hugely dependent upon there being no adverse or unexpected developments over the remainder of the financial year.”
Ryanair plans to grow its passenger traffic to 165 million for this financial year, running to 31 March 2023, which would be an 11 per cent increase on pre-Covid figures.
O’Leary said it was “too soon” to give any forecast for Ryanair’s profit during the current year, due to factors such as later booking patterns, volatile oil prices, potential new Covid outbreaks and geopolitical risks.
“Any guidance is subject to a very rapid change from unexpected events which are well beyond our control during what remains a very strong but still fragile recovery,” he added.