Ryanair has announced record annual profits of €1.92 billion, up 34 per cent on the previous year.
The low-cost carrier flew 183.7 million passengers in the year to March 2024, and said that it expects this figure to rise to between 198 and 200 million for FY25.
It did however stress that this growth would be dependent on Boeing deliveries returning to contracted levels before year-end.
Ryanair hopes to increase its Boeing 737 Max fleet to 158 aircraft by the end of July, but said that this would still be 23 short of contracted deliveries.
The carrier will eventually take delivery of 210 of what it calls its “Gamechanger” aircraft, and also has 150 737 Max 10s on order, with deliveries due to start from 2027.
Ryanair said it will operate its largest ever summer schedules this year, with more than 200 routes and five new bases – this is despite being forced to trim its summer schedules earlier this year due to the Boeing delivery delays.
Meanwhile the group announced that former UK home secretary Amber Rudd is to join its board as non-executive director from 1 July.
Commenting on the results Ryanair’s group CEO Michael O’Leary said:
“We expect European airline consolidation to continue, with the takeover of ITA (Italy) and Air Europa (Spain) progressing and the sale of TAP (Portugal) next. This, in addition to A320 fleet groundings and the large backlog of OEM aircraft deliveries, is likely to constrain capacity growth in Europe for some years.
“These capacity constraints, combined with our significant cost advantage (including FY25 fuel hedge savings of €450 million), a strong balance sheet, low-cost aircraft orders and industry leading resilience, will (we believe) underpin a decade of profitable growth for Ryanair as we grow to 300m passengers by FY34.”
