Ryanair growth switches lanes

The extraordinary rise of budget airline Ryanair could soon be showing signs of slowing down. As the recession over the past year has slowed our spending habits, it seems that the carrier was dropping fares to try and keep us all happy and flying. Ryanair has now admitted that the success they had in the past 10 years is slowing down as figures not seen since the 1990s are showing up on their profit sheets.

The airline revealed their third quarter figures recently and it showed that they made a loss of €11 million. This time of year has normally been their most profitable, but the cost of slashing fares has taken its toll on them. The results are better than experts were predicting and with their profit margin already high for the first part of the year, they are expected to hit around €275 million profit. The third quarter was helped out considerably by the saving of €207 million on fuel after some unwise hedging of oil prices.

In the last quarter the low-cost airline carried 14 per cent more passengers than the previous year, but a drop of airfare by 12 per cent all but cancelled this out. A spokesman for the carrier said they dropped their fares to keep people flying with them. Additional costs for checked luggage and other items were also lowered, but the purse strings still remained tight among their customers and spending lowered.