Ryanair regains lead as largest low-fares’ carrier

RYANAIR yesterday regained its place as European’s largest low-fares’ carrier after rival Easyjet posted monthly traffic figures showing it carried almost 350,000 less people than the Irish airline.

Easyjet said that it had carried 1,668,394 passengers in December, a 16% rise on the previous year, but below the 2.006 million flown by Ryanair in the same month.

Easyjet had overtaken Ryanair last year as the largest low-fares carrier by passengers when it acquired Go. But it has seen its lead drop as the Irish carrier expanded aggressively through the launch of 50 new routes in 2003 and acquisition of Buzz.

Easyjet’s load factor, which measures how full each plane is, increased by 3% to 80% in the month, though this is below’s Ryanair’s load factor of 80%.

But some brokers believe the British carrier has better long-term value given that it charges passengers more and from its increasing load factor.

“On balance, we believe that this improvement in load factor will have allowed the group to maintain yields in or around last year’s levels. While this yield performance is likely to be in sharp contrast to Ryanair’s forecasted 12% decline, it should be noted that the yields will have been flattered by sterling weakness, which will have added about 1.5% to yields.

In addition, the group is still expected to report a loss in the first half as its business remains much more seasonal than Ryanair’s,” NCB Stockbrokers said yesterday.

Meantime, it was reported the EC is unlikely to rule before the end of January on its State aid probe into a 2001 deal between the Belgian Charleroi airport and Ryanair.

It is studying whether incentives given by the publicly-owned airport broke State aid rules and a decision has been continuously put off since November.