As a result, 34 routes are suspended for the winter season from November to March 2018.
It said this will “eliminate all risk of further flight cancellations, because slower growth creates lots of spare aircraft and crews across Ryanair’s 86 bases this winter”.
In a statement, the airline said the slower rate of growth will slightly reduce its traffic this year and next.
“Our monthly growth from November 2017 to March 2018 will slow from 9% to 4%. Our full year traffic of 131 million will now moderate to 129 million, which is 7.5% up on last year,” Ryanair said.
“By slowing our summer 2018 fleet growth from 445 to 435 aircraft, we expect traffic to March 2019 will slow from 142 million to 138 million, a 7% rate of growth,” it added.
But it added that it does not expect today’s initiatives to alter its current year guidance of between €1.40 billion to €1.45 billion in profits after tax.
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Based on current booking levels, Ryanair expects the latest cancellations to affect an average of less than one flight per day across its five-month winter schedule.
It said that affected customers have received an email today giving them between five weeks to five months notice of these schedule changes, offering them alternative flights or full refunds of their airfare.
They have also received a €40 (€80 return) travel voucher which will allow them to book – during October – a flight on any Ryanair service between October 2017 and March 2018.
The airline said it expects the cost of these vouchers for affected customers will be less than €25m. [rte.ie]
PS now Ryanair customers should also worry whether will be a pilot on the flight they’ve booked…
and then this!
from Twitter 🙂
As long as they keep London-Athens! = ) Aegean and BA want way too much money!
Pshaw! You get what you pay for, if you shop wisely. Aegean is fine; BA is not.