Ryanair Slashes Ticket Prices

The lack of bookings is starting to bite the budget airlines and a price war may well be starting. Ryanair has announced the heavy discounting of three million seats and the chief executive Mr Michael O’Leary has now warned of a serious downturn in the industry. He has stated that bookings have remained strong but has had to admit that to achieve this the ticket prices have had to be cut. “It’s good for the customers but bad for profits,” he said.

Ryanair is now Europe’s largest budget carrier and is offering seats from £10 including all taxes and charges. The offer is to run between July and September this year.

Shares in the budget carriers have slipped since the price cutting began with Ryanair going down some four percent. Mr O’Leary has said that he is prepared for a big downturn in business over the next year but that his company is well placed to weather this storm by reducing fares. The demand for flights in the UK has reduced for various reasons including increasing airport charges and the effect of increasing mortgage rates on the spending power of the public.

So if you have a holiday or a short trip in mind there are going to be some great deals available from all the budget airlines over this summer. If things don’t improve for these airlines over the next twelve months we may well see these companies getting into real difficulties.

www.ryanair.com