ARCHIVED - Ryanair profits take-off but the airline warns travel recovery in Spain and the rest of Europe is fragile

The budget airline's boss said new coronavirus variants could disrupt an autumn rebound in Spain and other major markets

Budget airline Ryanair is back in the black following two years of losses brought about by the Covid pandemic, rising fuel costs and the war in Ukraine.

The Irish low-cost airline has announced a net profit of 170 million euros in the first quarter of 2022 (April-June), following losses of 273 million euros during the same period last year.

In a statement on Monday July 25, the Dublin-based company said the recovery was due to a "strong" rebound in its passenger traffic between April and June, when it carried 45.5 million users, 461% more than in 2021 at the height of Covid restrictions.

Ryanair said its turnover also increased by 602% between the two periods to 2.6 billion euros in the first fiscal quarter of this financial year, of which 582 million and 466 million euros came from its two main European markets, Italy and Spain, respectively.

Looking ahead to the anticipated summer recovery, CEO Michael O'Leary said that it is "not possible" to make a profit forecast for the full year due to external factors "beyond our control", and stressed that the rebound is "solid, but still fragile".

"While we expect that the high vaccination rate in Europe will allow the full recovery of the aviation and tourism sector and we will finally leave Covid behind, we cannot ignore the risk of new variants in the autumn of 2022," he added.

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Russia's invasion of Ukraine significantly impacted on the airline's seat sales at Easter, according to the CEO, which is why the average price of its airfares "fell by 4% from pre-pandemic levels".

So although Ryanair made a profit in the first quarter of the 2022-23 financial year for the first time in three years, it is still far from the figures for the same period in 2019 when the firm made 243 million euros.

And in the wake of cancellations and delays due to pilot and cabin crew strikes, customers could see price hikes after the airline warned that its fuel bill could continue to rise for the rest of the year. Fuel costs spiralled to 1 billion euros in the fiscal first quarter, almost six times more than in 2021.

O'Leary assured that Ryanair has covered up to 80% of its fuel needs for this year, which will end on March 31 2023, although he said that the current high price of oil is likely to affect the remaining 20%.

Commenting on the recent delays and flight cancellations experienced by many European airports and airlines in recent weeks, the Ryanair boss attributed the travel chaos to "unprecedented delays" in the operations of "air traffic controllers and ground staff".

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