Oil prices at $85 (€73.42) a barrel, and low fares will force weaker airlines out of business this winter, Ryanair’s chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs has said.
Speaking at the launch of Ryanair’s 2019 summer schedule, Mr Jacobs said the headlines in the past year had been about Ryanair’s industrial difficulties, but with agreements being signed with Ryanair’s workforce, “in the coming 12 months it will be about fuel, it will be about consolidation, it will be about rationalisation and it will be about which airline will go bust”, he said.
However, in relation to Ryanair’s plans for next year, Mr Jacobs said 2019 would be the “biggest ever Irish summer schedule” with 15 new routes, bringing the number of routes in and out of Ireland to more then 150.
The number of passengers to be carried by the airline in and out of Ireland is expected to reach 16.4 million, a figure which just five years ago would have been barely credible, Mr Jacobs said.
For Summer 2019 the airline has announced nine new flights from Dublin to Bordeaux (France), Bournemouth (UK), Cagliari (Italy), Frankfurt (Germany), Gothenburg (Sweden), Lourdes (France), London Southend (UK), and Thessaloniki (Greece). From Cork, five new flights are planned to Budapest (Hungary), Luton (UK), Malta, Naples (Italy) and Poznan (Poland). And from Shannon, there will be one new flight to Ibiza (Spain).
Asked about the probability for further growth, Mr Kenny said he believed the use of regional airports could significantly increase numbers further again.
Niall Gibbons, chief executive of Tourism Ireland, said the cost of air access to Ireland was “probably” at its lowest ever. But he warned that value for money when the tourist arrives in Ireland is a key issue. Costs in Ireland will not have been helped by the increase in Vat, he said.
He said regional and seasonal development offered scope for tourism growth. While some 20 percent of transatlantic flights into Ireland already went to airports other than Dublin, he said in marketing terms “Ireland without Dublin is a bit like Hamlet without the prince”.
Mr Gibbons said as an island the importance of convenient, non-stop flights could not be overstated and there was a direct link between rising tourist numbers and air access to the island. As air access on the Atlantic had grown, so too have visitor numbers, he said, and when the number of seats available from the UK increased in the last year, the numbers of visitors coming from Britain started to rise again.
