Fares to keep falling despite fiasco

RYANAIR’S latest attempt to resolve its “rostering failure” is not all bad news.

The company announced that it would be flying 25 fewer aircraft over the winter in a bid to “slow its growth” and “eliminate all risk of further flight cancellations”.

The collateral damage? Some 400,000 further customers disrupted by flight scheduling changes between November this year and March 2018.

However, there may be a silver lining to all of this. Ryanair also flagged that it would release one million seats from €10 this weekend, the first in a series of winter sales.

That’s the bigger picture. Disruptive though the cancellations are, the one thing we don’t have to worry about is a return to sky-high airfares of old.

Ryanair’s flight cancellations fiasco comes at a time of economic growth, surging air travel and low fuel prices. Air fares have never been so low, and there is more competition among airlines and across busy air routes than ever.

Last week, we saw Aer Lingus swoop with a “rescue sale” offering European flights from €30. This summer, Norwegian had direct flights to the US from €100. As I write, Wow Air is selling fares to Reykjavik from €40. We’ve also seen IAG launch Level, a new low-cost carrier, and Air France is shaping up to debut Joon, a new airline aimed at millenials. Whatever about losing reputation and face amid this horror show, Ryanair is not going to lose customers. One day, as Michael O’Leary has said, you could even fly for free. Let’s just hope those flights aren’t cancelled.