Ryanair to land connectivity deal by summer
While Ryanair’s finance chief Neil Sorahan last week said such a deal made sense but was low on the “to-do” list, Mr O’Leary yesterday suggested otherwise, calling such a move “a priority”.
Speaking at the launch of Ryanair’s Irish winter 2017 schedule Mr O’Leary said he hoped that the airline would be “feeding into someone — be it Aer Lingus or Norwegian Air — by April or May of this year.”
Ryanair has been talking to Aer Lingus owner IAG and Norwegian Air about a connectivity deal — where passengers can use Ryanair flights to link with their long haul connection and have their baggage automatically moved between the planes — for some time.
While Ryanair is adding two winter routes from Dublin, the airline said its current financial year — which runs to the end of March — will ultimately see a 3% drop in its Irish passenger numbers to 14.4m. This, it said, is due to rising airport charges being implemented by the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA).
Ryanair is targeting 200m passengers per year by 2024 and wants Dublin to cradle some of that growth, but warned that won’t be the case if airport charges don’t fall in line with other European cities.
Ryanair also urged the Government to introduce a new tourism strategy focused on attracting more visitors from mainland Europe while lowering the dependence on business from the UK.
Brexit, Mr O’Leary said, will be the biggest challenge facing the Irish economy in the coming years and will lessen the number of UK tourists coming to Ireland.
He said the airline may need to apply for a fresh air operators’ certificate (AOC) should Brexit result in Britain losing access to the EU’s ‘Open Skies’ deregulated aviation market.
Ryanair has been a major beneficiary of that system, with a third of its 120m passengers flying to and from UK airports.
The airline’s average fares, this financial year, are likely to be down by around 8%-9% and are expected to fall further next year, but only by 1%-3% in comparison, Mr O’Leary said.
Ryanair’s chief rival EasyJet yesterday warned that the weakening of sterling will likely have a harsher than expected impact on its profits this year.
The weak pound coupled with rising fuel costs is now expected to wipe around £105m (€122m) from EasyJet’s profits in the year to the end of September. The UK carrier – the second largest ‘budget’ airline in Europe behind Ryanair – had previously expected to take a £90m hit.
Ryanair’s share price was marginally down at €14.82 in Dublin yesterday. In London, EasyJet fell by nearly 9% to £9.81.
A busy day for aviation news also saw James Hogan announcing his resignation from Etihad Airways after ten years in charge and Dublin-based airline CityJet unveil the acquisition of Danish carrier Cimber, from Scandinavian Airlines (SAS).
On the back of the deal, CityJet has placed an order for up to €434m worth of Bombardier aircraft to boost its fleet by ten planes.
After this deal, CityJet will have a fleet of 23 jets. It is also doubling – to six years – its wet lease contract with SAS, which sees it operate regional services from Copenhagen.
