Low-cost airline Ryanair cuts passenger forecast due to Boeing delays
The Irish carrier said it now expects to carry 206 million passengers in its 2025-26 financial year, which would be growth of 3 per cent, down from the 210 million figure previously forecast.
It had already cut the guidance from 215 million to 210 million in November due to the issues at Boeing.
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Hide AdRyanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said: “While B737 production is recovering from Boeing’s strike in late 2024, we no longer expect Boeing to deliver sufficient aircraft ahead of summer 2025 to facilitate full-year 2025-26 traffic growth to 210 million passengers.


“Boeing delays have forced us to revise our 2025-26 traffic target to 206 million (just 3 per cent growth).”
Airlines have been affected by problems at Boeing, which was hit by a lengthy strike at the end of last year, while the aerospace giant has had to slow down production of its 737 MAX after a door panel blowout on a commercial flight in January last year.
With its passenger growth under pressure, Mr O’Leary said Ryanair would “reallocate this scarce capacity growth to those regions and airports – in Poland, Sweden and Italy – who are investing in growth by cutting/abolishing aviation taxes, and incentivising traffic growth”.
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Hide AdThe group said it was “cautiously” guiding for profits after tax to rise to between 1.55 billion euros (£1.30bn) and 1.61 billion euros (£1.35bn) for the current 2024-25 financial year, down from 1.92 billion euros (£1.62bn) the previous year.
Its latest update saw it report better-than-expected results for the three months to December 31, with after-tax profits at 149 million euro (£125m), up significantly from last year’s 15 million euro (£13m) and more than double analyst forecasts.
This was down to a 1 per cent rise in average air fares in the quarter and robust Christmas and New Year bookings, while it flew 9 per cent more passengers, at 45 million, despite the “prolonged Boeing delays”.
But it added that operating costs rose 8 per cent to 2.93 billion euros (£2.57bn) in the quarter due to higher staff costs and part as a result of the Boeing delays.
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Hide AdEarlier this month, budget airlines Ryanair and Wizz Air revealed that they both saw growing numbers of passengers in December, despite disruption to UK flights over the Christmas period.
Ryanair carried 13.6m passengers in December, up 8 per cent on the same period last year.
Wizz Air, meanwhile, carried 5.1m passengers, up 1.9 per cent year-on-year.
It comes after disruption to flights over the Christmas period at several major UK airports. Stansted, which is Ryanair’s main airport in the UK, suffered disruption because of foggy conditions.
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Hide AdAnd Gatwick airport suffered more than four days of fog-related flight disruptions in the week between Christmas and New Year.
Ryanair said it operated more than 77,000 flights in December, with a load factor – a metric used to indicate how full flights are – of 92 per cent.
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