Ryanair set to unveil soaring profits

Low-fare carrier Ryanair was today expected to announce a big increase in pre-tax profits for the first quarter of the financial year.

The figure for April-June 2002 could be as much as 35% up on the same period last year.

The results come at a time when the popularity of low-cost airlines is increasing, notwithstanding easyJet’s weekend problems when it had to cancel a number of holiday flights.

Yesterday, Ryanair announced that it carried 1.45 million passengers in July 2002 - 41% more than the same month last year.

The airline has been boosted by the news that a second terminal could be built at Dublin Airport affording further expansion for Ryanair which also has bases at Stansted, at Charleroi in Belgium and at Hahn, west of Frankfurt.

Ryanair carried 12 million passengers in the 12 months to the end of June and plans to have annual passenger numbers of 40 million by the end of this decade.

Ryanair is even more determined to forge ahead as it faces even tougher competition now that easyJet has taken over rival Go.

Last month Ryanair fiercely denied claims in an anonymous document that the airline’s pilots were ‘‘tired and scared of the way the company is being run and operated’’.

The document, which was passed to the European Cockpit Association which represents 31,000 airline crew, included allegations of drug and alcohol abuse by Ryanair cabin crew and pilots and said that staff continued to work when ill because they feared they would be fired if they failed to report for duty.

Ryanair’s chief pilot Ray Conway said the allegations were ‘‘entirely untrue and without foundation’’.