Ryanair is planning for major disruption in its business as a result of Brexit including the outside possibility it may have to move its entire UK fleet to continental Europe, CE Michael O'Leary said. The airline flies one-third of its 120m passengers from UK airports, leaving it among the most exposed in the industry to Britain's decision to leave the EU. An "Armageddon" scenario, in which a hard-line approach from both sides leaves planes unable to fly between Britain and the EU at the end of 2 years of divorce talks is "unlikely, but a possibility," O'Leary said. "We have a plan, we think, for every eventuality," he said. Even in the best-case scenario in which Britain retained access to the EU's "open skies" deregulated aviation market, Ryanair does not plan to deploy to the UK any of the 65 planes it has due for delivery during Brexit talks. <br/>
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Ryanair is in talks about providing connecting flights to Alitalia’s long-haul services and has raised objections with German authorities about a Lufthansa-Air Berlin tie-up, as it tries to ease its expansion in continental Europe. The airline is looking to add 11m passengers in the year to March 2018 and has frozen expansion in top market Britain in the wake of its decision to leave the EU. But it is unlikely to look to acquisitions to fuel that growth due to inefficiencies at rivals and the fact most have Airbus fleets, rather than Boeing planes as used by Ryanair, CE Michael O'Leary said. Ryanair is currently in talks with Alitalia about providing feeder flights to its long-haul hubs in a deal that could help the Italian carrier curb losses on short-haul flights. <br/>
EasyJet has been suffering plenty of disruption. Tuesday, EasyJet said it had incurred an “additional disruption cost” in the last quarter mainly due to higher numbers of EU compensation claims for delayed flights. In fact, last year, claims adviser AirHelp ranked EasyJet the second worst of 34 airlines for on-time arrivals, compensation hold-ups and service (behind Azores airline SATA). But that was nothing compared with the disruption cost from another product of disputed EU claims: Brexit. EasyJet said the continued weakness of the pound since the UK voted to leave the EU, plus rising fuel costs would have an adverse impact of GBP105m in the full year to Sept 30 — some GBP35m worse than previously expected. What really worried analysts, though, was the strange noise coming from EasyJet’s corporate treasury department. <br/>
Joy Air may not be able to earn a profit in the next 2 years because of operational issues that include consolidation challenges with Okay Airways and expansion restrictions as a result of safety accidents, according to Okay Airways founder Liu Jieyin. Okay and Joy Air are merging through consolidating regional operations. Last year, Joy Air changed its main operating base to Tianjin in an effort to further consolidate regional operations with Tianjin-based Okay Airways. “We didn’t suspend some [regional] routes. But we are forbidden from opening new routes, boosting flight frequencies and operating charter flights [by the CAAC because of safety accidents] and thus we can’t expand. We are prepared to linger in the red for at least 2 years,” Liu said. <br/>