Ryanair boss: I look forward to a recession

LOW-BUDGET airline boss Michael O’Leary wishes our budgets were all a bit lower – because he reckons it would be good for Ryanair.

The comments came as the budget airline reported losses of €355million and said it hopes to return to ‘reasonable profitability’ in the current financial year.

However, Mr O’Leary said a recession would improve the nofrills company’s future finances, telling Bloomberg: ‘I would look forward with some optimism to an economic downturn because I think it would be better for Ryanair’s business.

‘In every past recession, we have grown stronger and faster because people don’t stop flying in a recession, they get more price-sensitive. Ikea, Lidl, Ryanair will be the beneficiaries of a downturn.’

The group’s loss for the year to March 31 was smaller than expected and narrowed from the €1.02billion losses the previous year. Earlier this week, Mr O’Leary warned that flight prices will be higher this summer due to soaring demand for European holidays.

Holidaymakers should brace for prices to rise by a ‘high singledigit per cent’ over the peak season as demand for breaks on European beach resorts rebounds thanks to the lifting of pandemic travel restrictions, he told BBC Radio 4.

Mr O’Leary said there was also likely to be ongoing delays at airports such as Heathrow and Manchester, blaming staff shortages.

He said there are ‘pinch-points’ at Heathrow and Manchester, where he claimed ‘too many people’ have been sacked, but added he hopes to see delays ease off in time for the busy summer season.

Ryanair said traffic recovered strongly as it carried 97.1million guests, up from just 27.5 million in 2020 due to the pandemic It said it hopes to boost this further to 165 million passengers this year – ahead of the 149million record level seen preCovid – but that it was still having to slash prices to secure bookings amid ongoing uncertainty in its first quarter.

Mr O’Leary signalled prices would ramp up over the next few months. He told the Today Programme: ‘I think capacity, generally, across the summer will be down 10%, 15%. For the September quarter at the moment, based on about 50% of all bookings, we expect prices will be up high single-digit per cent.

‘It seems to us that there will be higher prices into that peak summer period because there’s so much demand for the beaches of Europe and those price rises going to continue.’

The group said its peak fares for this summer may rise above those seen before the pandemic struck.

It cautioned over rising fuel costs due to soaring oil prices amid the Ukraine war.