Ryanair buys 32 Boeing 737s
Low fare airline Ryanair has announced the order of a further 32 Boeing 737-800 series aircraft, bringing the total number of firm orders for Boeing 737-800s to 281.
These 32 next generation 737-800 aircraft are due for delivery between September 2008 and June 2009 and will facilitate double digit annual growth from 42 million passengers this year to 84 million passengers in 2012 as Ryanair doubles in size and becomes Europe’s largest international airline.
These firm orders are the conversion of options agreed with Boeing in 2005 at prices that give Ryanair the lowest per seat operating cost of any European airline.
Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary, said: "Our outlook for this winter remains cautious. This winter we will launch 106 new routes and 2 new bases (Marseilles and Bremen). We have also hedged our fuel requirements for Q4 at an average cost of $73 per barrel, lower than we had originally anticipated."
"Based on our aircraft delivery programme, our new routes and bases, we anticipate that passenger growth will be slightly higher at 22% (previously 20%) to 42.5m for the full year.
"We anticipate that our loss making competitors will continue to dump fares. We also expect slightly lower load factors (down 2% on last year) during H2 which will give improved yield stability in the winter period.
"This will result in the decline in forecast yields being closer to 5% which is at the lower end of the (-5% to -10%) range we previously guided.
"As a result of these factors we believe that the increase in Net Profit after Tax for the fiscal year will be approximately 11% to €335m, slightly higher than our previous (+5% to +10%) range of profit guidance."
