Slow jabs rollout will hurt us, say Ryanair
RYANAIR believes it may come close to breaking even this year – but fears the slow progress of the EU’s Covid-19 vaccination programme will hamper its recovery.
The low-cost carrier said it expects to carry close to 80 million passengers during its current financial year, which ends March 31, 2022.
It had previously forecast that it could carry up to 120 million passengers.
Ryanair had hoped that a rapid rollout of the coronavirus vaccine would enable European governments to restart short haul, international air travel, and reopen cities and beaches to tourists again, as well as give passengers the confidence to book.
However, compared to the UK, the EU vaccination programme has been slow and beset by problems.
As a result of the slow rollout and Easter travel restrictions, Ryanair now believes it will take longer than expected to rebuild its business.
It also tried to dampen hopes that reopening the skies could lead to it becoming profitable again this year.
In a statement, Ryanair said: “While it is not possible at this time to provide meaningful profit guidance for the new financial year, we do not share the recent optimism of certain analysts.” It added that it expected to roughly break even.
The budget airline will unveil what is expected to be a record annual loss of up to €850million (£735million) when it releases its 2020-21 results on May 17.
As with other airlines, Ryanair saw passenger numbers collapse last year due to the pandemic. It said that it flew 27.5 million people in 2020-21, compared to 149 million the year before.
Elsewhere, over-50s specialist Saga said that it made a pre-tax loss of £61.2million for the 12 months to the end of January 2021 due to the pandemic. Revenues fell 57.7 per cent to £337.6million.
While it is the third annual loss in a row for Saga, it is a marked improvement on the £301million loss it announced last year, which was caused by write-offs at its insurance business. Saga hopes to restart its cruise ship business in the summer and is looking to rehire 500 workers that were cut last year.