Fare play

Airline passes on fuel saving

RYANAIR is set to slash its fares by up to 7% over the next year.

The budget carrier claimed its average one-way ticket price would drop to around £33 as it passed on £60million of fuel cost savings to customers.

The anticipated 5% to 7% fall was also put down to “weaker sterling and continuing excess capacity in Europe”.

The dive follows a 13% decline in Ryanair’s average fare in the year to April.

It offset lost money from cheaper fares by growing customer numbers 13% to 120 million, and cutting costs by 11%, as profits rose 6% to £1.14billion.

The Irish carrier aims to grow passenger numbers to 130 million this year, with a target of 200 million by 2024. Ryanair also claimed it could not be hit by the sort of IT meltdown that crippled British Airways over the bank holiday weekend because it is simpler and has better fail-safe systems.

BA blamed a power surge for the chaos, which led to thousands of flights being cancelled.

David O’Brien, Ryanair chief commercial officer, had a dig at BA saying: “All of our IT is in Europe and all of our development is in Europe.”

Unions claim BA’s chaos was made worse by the outsourcing of IT work to India, a claim the airline has denied.

Ryanair’s results also revealed what a money spinner add-ons, from priority boarding to car hire, is becoming. So-called “ancillary revenue” jumped 2% to £1.56bn last year and made up 27% of the group’s sales.