Days of the £10 f light are over, says Ryanair boss
SOARING fuel prices mean the age of ultra-low air fares is over, Ryanair’s boss warned yesterday.
Michael O’Leary said he expects the budget airline’s average fare to rise by about £8.50 over the next five years to more than £40.
Fares below £10 – sometimes as low as £1 – will not be seen again until near the end of the decade, if ever, he said.
Mr O’Leary predicted that ‘ many millions’ of travellers will ditch more expensive carriers such as British Airways and easyJet as fares continue to rise amid a cost of living squeeze.
He told Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I don’t think there’s going to be ten euro flights any more because oil prices are significantly higher as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Our average fare, which last year was 40 euros (about £34)... we think that will need to edge up to 50 euros in the next five years.
‘There’s no doubt that at the lower end of the marketplace, our really cheap promotional fares – the one euro fares, the 0.99 euro fares, even the 9.99 euro fares – I think you will not see those fares for the next number of years.
‘We think people will continue to fly frequently. But I think people are going to become much more price sensitive.’ In July last year, Ryanair offered £5 one-way tickets to destinations in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland as Covid-19 travel restrictions were eased.
But the cheapest flights from London Stansted for next Thursday are now £130 to Lisbon, £189 to Athens, £130 to Madrid and £149 to Dublin. The lowest price was to Faro for £60. Fares have risen amid a cap on passenger numbers at Gatwick and Heathrow.
BA has even stopped selling short-haul tickets from Heathrow until at least next week.
Budget airline Wizz Air has warned that ticket prices will rise by around 10 per cent over the summer. The airports said their caps were necessary because airlines were attempting to schedule an unrealistic number of flights amid shortages of check-in staff and baggage handlers.
But Mr O’Leary accused Heathrow of mismanagement for bringing in its cap at short notice.
He said he had ‘very little sympathy’ for airports, as they knew schedules months in advance.
However, Heathrow boss John Holland-Kaye said the cap was working, adding: ‘Passengers are seeing better, more reliable journeys since the introduction of the demand cap.’
Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency, said: ‘Flight prices are sky-high at the moment because of pent-up demand after two years of Covid19 restrictions and people having saved a lot of money during lockdown. I wouldn’t expect prices to start falling for a while yet, probably not until the sales begin around October.’