Ryanair posted a record annual profit Monday as it brushed off a rostering mess-up that forced it to cancel flights and sparked a dispute with pilots, but warned profits would fall back in the coming year due to higher costs and no fare growth. Ryanair cancelled 20,000 flights in September as an emergency measure to free up enough standby pilots to ensure the smooth operation of its fleet of 400 planes for the remainder of the year. The cancellations sparked a wave of bad publicity and forced Ryanair to cut its growth plans for the first time in years. It has insisted this is a temporary measure and its long-term growth target remains intact. The carrier booked a record E1.45b profit after tax in its financial year to March 31, up 10% year-on-year and slightly ahead of an average forecast of E1.44b in a company poll of analysts. However, it said it expected to make a profit after tax of between E1.25b and E1.35b for the coming financial year, lower than the E1.37b expected on average by the analysts forecast. While Ryanair expects to grow traffic by 7% to 139m passengers, up on the 138m last forecast, unit costs are expected to rise by 9% due to higher staff and oil prices with revenue from ancillary products unlikely to grow fast enough to fully offset this and broadly flat fares. “Our outlook for FY19 is on the pessimistic side of cautious,” CE Michael O’Leary said. “Forward bookings are strong but pricing remains soft. While still too early to accurately forecast close-in summer bookings or H2 fares, we are cautiously guiding broadly flat average fares for FY19.”<br/>
unaligned
Ryanair CE Michael O’Leary said the airline may have to review its new luggage policy if large numbers of passengers continue to hand over their bags at the gate. Ryanair has introduced a stricter cabin bag policy, which means customers have to pay GBP5 for priority boarding to avoid having their main cabin bag checked in to the hold at the departure gate. This has improved boarding and punctuality, the airline said, but O’Leary added that “it is creating a handling issue, especially at peak periods” such as bank holiday weekends and during the summer. “There are many flights where we’re now having to put 100 or 120 gate bags free of charge into the hold,” . “If that continues to build, it’s something we may have to look at again.” <br/>
Discount rivals EasyJet and Ryanair are shoring up their shareholder base in continental Europe in order to safeguard their right to fly there after Brexit. EasyJet is holding investor roadshows in France and Germany this week and last week in a bid to increase the proportion of stock held within the European Union once Britain leaves. Ryanair said Monday that it will remove the voting rights of non-EU holders in the event of a so-called hard Brexit. With less than a year to go before the UK is scheduled to leave the EU, terms of a post-Brexit relationship remain elusive. The slow progress of talks has forced airlines with strong ties to the UK to plan for contingencies, because under EU rules carriers must be more than 50 percent owned by people and institutions based in member states in order to have an operating license within the bloc. “On balance you would think common sense will prevail,” Ryanair Chief Executive Officer Michael O’Leary said Monday. “But the Brexit discussions have not been characterized by a lot of common sense so far.” Ryanair, though based in Dublin, wouldn’t fulfill the EU criteria after Brexit because it has 20% of its shareholders in the UK and a large number of US investors holding American depositary receipts. EasyJet’s EU ownership comes up slightly short of a majority at 49% once the UK is excluded. “In a hard-brexit scenario we’d have to go out and restrict the voting rights of non-EU holders,” CFO Neil Sorahan said. “It’s part of our contingency plan.”<br/>
A Frontier Airlines flight from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to San Diego was forced to make an emergency landing in New Mexico after flight attendants smelled an unknown odour. Frontier Airlines Flight 1839 made an emergency landing at the Albuquerque International Sunport late Sunday due to the unknown smell in the cabin. Frontier Airlines says the flight landed safely and no injuries were reported among the 129 passengers and six crew members. The cause of the odour is under investigation. Frontier reportedly gave passengers a $200 flight voucher, put them in hotels overnight, and rescheduled them on a flight Monday morning.<br/>
Bangkok Air will soon submit specifications for an order of 20 narrow-body planes to Airbus, Boeing and Bombardier, its President Puttipong Prasattong-Osoth said. The carrier, which currently has 12 Airbus 319s and nine Airbus 320s, will pick one manufacturer for the order by the end of the year, Puttipong said Friday. "The good thing is, once we change our planes to all be the same model, the cost of operation and maintenance will be lower," he said. The full-service carrier is striving to support earnings by containing costs as oil prices climb and fierce competition limits pricing power. Shares in Thailand’s airlines have struggled because of such pressures, despite the kingdom’s unprecedented tourism boom of recent years. Bangkok Airways has tumbled more than 40% since listing in 2014. "Every year we manage to post profits," said Puttipong. "But when it comes to the stock price, it really is a complicated mechanism -- one that we can never anticipate."<br/>
Alaska Airlines passengers will soon notice something different when they order in-flight cocktails or coffees: those plastic stirring sticks? They’re about to go the way of paper tickets and empty middle seats. Alaska Airlines will phase out plastic stirring sticks in favor of compostable versions made of white birch. Citrus picks will switch from plastic to bamboo. It’s all in the name of the environment, swapping out the singe-use plastic sticks for a more sustainable option. The changes begin July 16, when Alaska starts phasing out the plastic items from its flights and frequent-flier lounges. Though some global airlines have pledged to gradually reduce the use of such items, Alaska Airlines says its move will make it the first in the US to eliminate them altogether.<br/>