Air fares are set to rise this year as delivery delays from plane-makers Airbus and Boeing squeeze capacity on aircraft, according to Ryanair’s chief financial officer Neil Sorahan.
“My gut tells me they are going to be up,” he told The Irish Times following publication of the airline’s third quarter results for its 2025 financial year, which showed it generated a profit after tax of €149 million in the three months to the end of December.
“Capacity will remain constrained and air fares will be up,” he said. “It’s just too soon to put a number on what that increase might be. Airbus and Boeing are both behind on deliveries. We’re going to have less passengers than planned.”
Ryanair grew its profit after tax almost tenfold in the quarter, recovering some of the ground lost last year when profits plunged 93 per cent from €211 million to €15 million after several agents stopped selling its flights on their websites due to a row over screen scraping.
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While the result was well ahead of analysts’ expectations, it lagged last year by 12 per cent in terms of profits in the year-to-date. Traffic grew 9 per cent to 45 million passengers due to stronger Christmas and New Year bookings, while air fares were up 1 per cent.
However, profit for the nine months of its financial year-to-date comes to €1.9 billion, which is down 12 per cent from €2.2 billion over the same period a year earlier. The airline blamed the dip on 8 per cent lower air fares over the period.
Looking ahead, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said he was “cautiously guiding” full year profit after tax of €1.55 billion to €1.6 billion, which would be down on the €1.9 billion it generated last year.
However, Mr Sorahan noted it would still represent the airline’s second strongest year on record. He described the airline’s bookings ahead of Easter and the summer as “very robust”.
Mr O’Leary cautioned that hitting its profit guidance remains subject to avoiding adverse developments such as further conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East, more Boeing delivery delays, as well as air traffic control “mismanagement” or short-staffing in Europe.
He said Ryanair was continuing to work with Boeing to accelerate aircraft deliveries, but that following a meeting with the plane-maker in Seattle in recent weeks, he no longer expects a shortfall of aircraft to be made up in time for this summer.
As a result, the airline has trimmed its customer traffic forecast from 210 million to 206 million for the 12 months to the end of March 2026, which would represent growth of just 3 per cent. An earlier forecast of 215 million was cut in November.
“We’re hopeful that the remaining 29 gamechanger [aircraft] in our order-book will deliver before March 2026, enabling us to recover this delayed traffic growth,” Mr O’Leary said.
He added that the airline will reallocate its “scarce capacity growth” over the coming year to regions and airports in Poland, Sweden and Italy, which are “investing in growth by cutting or abolishing aviation taxes, and incentivising traffic growth”.
The airline expects full year traffic to be almost 200 million passengers this year, which would represent an increase of 9 per cent. It has set a target of growing this number out to 300 million over the next decade.
The group is now more than halfway through its current €800 million share buyback and Mr O’Leary said it remains on track to complete this programme by the middle of the year. An interim dividend of €0.223 per share will be paid in late February.
Total revenue for the quarter rose 10 per cent to almost €3 billion, while operating costs rose 8 per cent to €2.9 billion as fuel hedge savings offset higher staff and other costs, which the airline partly put down to the Boeing delivery delays.
Gross cash on December 31st was €2.8 billion, which delivered a quarter-end net cash balance of €75 million.
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