Ryanair is never shy to point fingers when things go wrong, and stayed true to form on Monday as it laid the blame for a trim in its traffic target next year squarely at the door of US plane-maker Boeing.
The 2 per cent trim from 210 million passengers to 206 million follows a trip to Boeing’s production facility in Seattle by a contingent of Ryanair executives that included chief executive Michael O’Leary and chief financial officer Neil Sorahan.
Sorahan said the group enjoyed a “good meeting” with Boeing executives, and he observed “significant improvements” on the factory floor compared to previous visits to the facility. Quality had improved “a huge amount”, while he described morale as “very good”.
“They have shored up the balance sheet, so that’s one less thing for them to worry about,” he said. “They’ve sorted out the labour issues. Dealing with the strike was an expensive exercise for them but we are seeing and will see improvements coming.”
He said he had “a strong degree of confidence” Ryanair will take delivery of nine Boeing Max aircraft ahead of its peak summer season having seen a number of those aircraft on the factory floor. The rest of the fuselages have already been built, and are either on rail carts from Wichita in Kansas to Seattle or they are getting ready to be loaded.
The final 29 aircraft of Ryanair’s order will arrive by March next year, helping to lift traffic to 215 million passengers in the year to March 2027.
Meanwhile, O’Leary and Sorahan will hardly have been sorry to see the back of Eamon Ryan, the former Green Party TD who stepped aside as transport minister following the election of a new coalition last week. Sorahan said he has yet to meet his successor, Darragh O’Brien, but expects the airline to be “high on his dance card”.
The big issue for Ryanair, as everybody knows, is the passenger cap at Dublin Airport, and Sorahan noted out that O’Brien comes from the Dublin Fingal East constituency where the airport is based, and so might be minded to act sooner rather than later.
“He has a lot of constituents who are employed either directly or indirectly by the airport,” he said. “Hopefully he will act quickly in resolving the cap issue. It is within his gift to do so, and I would urge him to get on with it as quickly as possible.”
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