Maybe Ryanair cant fill all of its planes after all !

Ryanair have today announced their results for the second quarter of the financial year. They increased traffic by 45%, reduced fares by 12% and rose profits by 16%.

But the thing I found most interesting was the following.

It has sometimes been said by some people on this forum that Ryanair seem to manage high load factors on most of their routes and fill their planes to destinations in the middle of no-where. However today, an exception was noticed.

Of the 2 new bases launched this year by Ryanair (Milan Bergamo and Stockholm Skavsta), Milan was the better performer as expected. Load factors at the Stockholm base have been slightly lower, largely as a result of the lower than expected load factors on the 3 intra – Scandinavian routes (Aarhus, Oslo and Tampere). Ryanair is currently in discussions with Skavsta airport to see if they can even bring up the performance of these routes to acceptable load factors or replace them with new international services.

Also some of the new routes from Stansted this summer have also underperformed. These routes are 1 or 2 French destinations and particularly routes to the low countries. Unless there is a significant improvement in load factors through the winter, then Ryanair will replace a small number of these routes with alternative destinations and services, by selecting some of the 50 new airports that Ryanair is currently in discussion’s with.

I noticed myself that the intra – Scandinavian routes may have been underperforming when I saw the frequencies drop from 2 to 1 daily services on the Tampere and Oslo routes only a few months after they started. I was shocked about the French and low country services underperforming. My guess is that Groningen and Ostend are the underperforimng routes from London

Regards
dan777