Faced with the increase in the price of kerosene, Michael O’Leary warned that prices would increase.
«There is no doubt that our lowest prices, those at 0.99 euros or 9.99 euros, you will not see them in the next few years.“. Asked by BBC4 radio, Ryanair’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, whistled the end of the era of very cheap tickets. More generally, the low-cost company should see the average ticket go from 40 to 50 euros, he added. An increase that he justifies by soaring fuel prices.
Far from being perceived as a threat, this increase in costs would, according to him, be an opportunity: “ We think people will continue to fly frequently. But I think they’re going to become a lot more price sensitive“, and therefore that they will choose the cheapest companies more, he believes.
A complicated summer
For the moment, however, Ryanair is going through an area of turbulence. The showdown with its employees continues in Spain where a strike was launched on June 24. It was extended for the first time on July 28, before recently being extended until January 2023. But these tensions are present in many countries. The pilots walked off in Belgium and France and obtained upgrades.
Read alsoAir transport: weakened by their stinginess, low-cost companies suffer more than other companies
More generally, the entire aviation sector is going off the rails. This summer, they had a hard time digesting the resumption of their activity. The mass return of vacation-hungry travellers, after two years punctuated by the waves of Covid, has given rise to images of chaos in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Sydney and even Chicago: hours of waiting before checks , thousands of bags piled up in airport halls, tens of thousands of flights canceled since June…
SEE ALSO – Covid-19: Ryanair will recover faster than ‘incumbent airlines’, CEO says