RYANAIR CHIEF executive Michael O’Leary yesterday indicated that the airline could post a profit in the current financial year if oil were to remain below $130 a barrel.
“We are not changing the guidance, but if oil stays where it is today, we will clearly do better than previous guidance,” he said.
Oil was trading yesterday at about $113 a barrel, well below the level that Ryanair last month said could force it into the red in the year to the end of March.
On July 28th, Ryanair said it would record a full-year result of between break-even and a loss of $60 million if oil averaged $130 a barrel and it reduced its fares by 5 per cent.
In July, Ryanair said it had hedged 90 per cent of its fuel requirement for September at $129 a barrel and 80 per cent from October to December at $124 a barrel.
Mr O’Leary said yesterday that the airline had not hedged any more of its requirement, in spite of the sharp drop in the price of jet fuel in the past few weeks.
“We haven’t extended the hedging programme at all,” he said.
“We haven’t hedged anymore because the price of oil is falling.”
In a wide-ranging press conference in Dublin yesterday, Mr O’Leary said Ryanair had no interest in buying Stansted Airport in London, if the UK’s competition body forces Spanish airport manager Ferrovial to sell the facility.
A report recently in a UK newspaper said Ryanair would be interested in buying Stansted, but Mr O’Leary said his comments had been taken out of context.
“We have no interest in owning airports,” Mr O’Leary said. “But we would be happy to work with anybody buying it on building a second terminal. We could help double traffic there from 20 million to 40 million.”
Mr O’Leary said Ryanair planned to clamp down on screenscraping websites that he says are ripping customers off by adding “hidden fees and mark-ups”.
He was particularly critical of the National Consumer Agency for failing to act on what he described as “illegal mis-selling” of its tickets.
“The National Consumer Agency is utterly useless,” he said.
Mr O’Leary said up to 1,000 bookings a day were being made by these “scam artists”.
He said Ryanair was now cancelling bookings made by screenscraping websites.
The airline has been involved in a high-profile dispute with Bravofly Ltd, which it has accused of using its website illegally.
