Ryanair is happy to sell plane tickets at a loss in order to get people on its planes during off-peak spells, the chief executive has said, as he shared that low-cost flights will continue to be on offer – though not as inexpensive as they once were.
Michael O’Leary was speaking to The Independent after research showed a wide range of flights selling for less than the £13 Air Passenger Duty his airline must pay when a customer steps on board a Ryanair plane from the UK.
From London Stansted to Venice, a £12.99 fare is available any day from Saturday 20 January to Thursday 25 January.
The same applies from the Essex airport to Catania in Sicily, all week from Thursday 18 January to Wednesday 24 January. The one-way journey is 1,230 miles, for a £12.99 fare that is less than the Stansted Express train from London to the airport – even with a railcard.
A snapshot by The Independent found the same £12.99 deal for flights departing from British airports on Wednesday 24 January, such as Bristol to Sofia in Bulgaria – a three-hour journey covering almost 1,400 miles. Other journeys available at the same fare on the same day include Belfast International to Porto and Stansted to Prague or Baden Baden.
“There will always be periods of time, particularly at this time of the year – January, February before you get to the school mid-term break or the Easter holidays or summer – where we’re trying to fill flights,” Mr O’Leary said.
“We’re happy to fill flights at loss-making air fares. So there will still be lots of low air fares.”
The airline tells investors it has a “load factor active – yield passive strategy whereby seats are priced to ensure that high load factor targets are achieved”.
In 2022, Michael O’Leary said the days of €9.99 (£8.50) flights were over – a view he reiterated to The Independent for 2024.
“We’re now paying $80 a barrel for fuel. I don’t think you’ll see a return to £9.99 air fares but £15, £20, £25 is still a phenomenally cheap air fare – when you go back to the pre-deregulation days of the 1980s or the early 1990s when airfares were regularly £200 or £300.”
Anna Hughes, director of Flight Free UK, said: “Ryanair offering flights at a loss shows just how upside down our transport system is.
“Even considering Air Passenger Duty, there’s still no tax on aviation…
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