Ryanair will ask the courts to overturn a night-flight limit that planners imposed last week on Dublin Airport, chief executive Michael O’Leary said on Monday.
Ryanair Holdings, Europe’s biggest airline, reported that profits more than doubled to €820 million in the three months to the end of June.
Speaking after the company published the results, Mr O’Leary confirmed that it would ask the High Court to review a ruling by An Comisiún Pleanála limiting flights at Dublin Airport between 11pm and 7am to 35,672 a-year.
He argued that Dublin Airport has had enough capacity to cater for 60 million passengers a-year, almost twice what it handles now, since it opened its second runway in 2022.
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“Airlines should be allowed to use that and grow,” he added.
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Mr O’Leary said that the night-flight limit amounted to a second cap on passengers at Dublin, in addition to an existing limit of 32 million a-year imposed by planners in 2007.
He called on Taoiseach Micheál Martin and the Government to axe both limits on the country’s biggest airport.
The Ryanair boss predicted that the European courts would throw out the new flight limit as EU law bars artificial restrictions on flights.
He suggested that US airlines, already angered by the passenger cap, could also put pressure on the State over the night-flight ruling.
Mr O’Leary pointed out that the Government pledged to end the 32 million passenger cap in its programme for government document published in January.
“Seven months later they are all about to go on three months holiday and nothing has been done,” he declared.
Both Ryanair and Aer Lingus predicted last week that the night-flight limit would stymie growth at Dublin as it covered 5am to 7am, a key period for both short- and long-haul flying.
Earlier on Monday, Ryanair said it carried 57.9 million passengers in the three months to the end of June, the first quarter of its financial year, an increase of 4 per cent over the same period in 2024.
Profit after tax grew 128 per cent to €820 million from €360 million as sales increased 20 per cent to €4.34 billion.
Mr O’Leary said that fares in the first quarter benefited substantially from a having a full Easter holiday in April. The bank holiday fell between March and April last year.
He noted that full-year traffic remained on track to grow just 3 per cent to 206 million passengers, a result of delayed deliveries of new aircraft from Boeing.
“While summer 2025 demand is strong, quarter two fare increases will be lower than in quarter one and we now expect to recover almost all of the 7 per cent fare decline we saw in the previous year’s quarter two,” Mr O’Leary said.
He added that it was too early to give meaningful profit after tax guidance for the current financial year, which ends on March 31st 2026.
However, he noted that the airline “cautiously expected” to recover almost all of last year’s 7 per cent slide in fares.
Mr O’Leary repeated calls on Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president, to protect flights through member states’ airspace during air traffic control strikes.
Industrial action by French air traffic control staff regularly forces Ryanair and other carriers to cancel flights that travel through the country’s skies, but which do not land there.
Ryanair cancelled 700 flights, hitting 130,000 passengers, including services from the Republic to popular holiday destinations during a French strike on July 3rd and 4th.
The airline’s chief executive added that French air traffic control strikes disproportionately hit passengers from both countries.
Ryanair shares were up almost 6 per cent at €24.50 shortly before 11am on Monday.
