Ryanair Sees Decline In Annual Traffic As Boeing Expects To Delay 17 Planned Aircraft Deliveries

(RTTNews) - Ryanair Holdings Plc (RYA.L, RYAAY), an Irish low-cost carrier, on Friday, confirmed that The Boeing Company (BA) now expects to deliver only 40 out of the 57 planned B737-MAX8200 aircraft due to be delivered before the end of June 2024.

Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair's Group said: "We regret any inconvenience caused to some customers and our airport partners by these enforced S24 schedule changes, which will reduce our full-year traffic growth from 184 m in FY24 to between 198 m to 200 m in FY25. We are working with our airport partners to deliver some growth to them, albeit later in Sept and Oct (rather than Jul and Aug)."

The airline's current S24 schedule was based on receiving a minimum of 50 B737 aircraft.

The company will now have to reduce around 10 aircraft lines of flying for the peak summer months of July, August, and September 2024.

Ryanair expects that these further S24 schedule changes will reduce fiscal March 2025 traffic to just under 200 million passengers compared to an original target of 205 million.

The delay in deliveries will cause some minor schedule changes in the context of Ryanair's 600 aircraft fleet and will reduce frequencies on existing routes rather than cutting new routes.

The company expects that the latest Boeing delivery delays, combined with the grounding of up to 20 percent of its Airbus competitors' A320 fleets in Europe, will lead to more constrained capacity and slightly higher air fares for consumers in Europe in summer 2024.