Ryanair expects its loss for the just-ending financial year at around the middle of its forecasted range and is well placed for next year depending on traffic recovery and fares, its chief executive said on Thursday. Asked on the sidelines of an A4E airlines conference about Ryanair's loss forecast of E250-450m for the year to March 31, CEO Michael O'Leary told Reuters: "we think we'll be somewhere in the middle of that range". Asked whether the year to end-March 2023 could see a return to pre-pandemic profits around E1.5b, he said: "There's a chance but it all depends on pricing. I mean, certainly our costs are reasonably robust for the next 12 months."<br/>
unaligned
The boss of Irish budget carrier Ryanair raised the stakes in a feud with Boeing over jet prices by saying he could do without a long-stalled deal to buy the 737 MAX 10 - even as Boeing appeared to woo his arch-rival easyJet. The latest salvo in a dispute between Europe's largest low-cost airline group and Boeing, the exclusive supplier of its main fleet, came as airline chiefs met for the first time in two years to review a pandemic recovery clouded by war in Ukraine. Ryanair last year walked away from negotiations with Boeing for 200 of its largest type of single-aisle jet, the 737 MAX 10, accusing the planemaker of being "delusional" about prices. On Thursday, CE Michael O'Leary noted no signs of a breakthrough but said he would meet Boeing in April. "We have to wait for Boeing to be in a kind of headspace for talking about MAX 10s. At the moment, they're dealing with a backlog of deliveries, 777 issues, design delays or certification delays on the MAX 10. They have a whole heap of problems," O'Leary said. "There are many times in my life that I missed the market, there's always that possibility. But you know, even if we have, we're very content where we are; we have 210 aircraft deliveries to take over the next five years," he said.<br/>
The wait for India’s Jet Airways to hit the runway might get a little longer. But the new promoters of the airline maintain the restart activities are “progressing well.” While the Jalan-Kalrock Consortium, which won the right to restructure Jet Airways, makes a statement almost every quarter on resuming operations, the progress so far hasn’t been encouraging. However, Akasa, the other airline set to launch in India, has already announced it would be launching its first commercial flight in the month of June. Jet Airways went bust in 2019 and was revived after its new promoters — a consortium of entrepreneur Murari Lal Jalan and serial entrepreneur Florian Fritsch-backed Kalrock Capital — infused cash into it. Dubbing the process of restarting an airline “a complex exercise that must be done meticulously, in coordination with the regulatory authorities,” the consortium in its statement this month said that the process is underway. “The timeline reflects the typical duration of an air operators certificate process. However, we fully expect to have the proving flight and air operator’s certificate well in advance of the filed timelines.” The airline has said that it is working closely with India’s civil aviation ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation on the approval process and timelines for proving flight, following which Jet Airways’ air operators certificate (AOC) will be revalidated. “The resumption of scheduled services will follow soon thereafter,” the airline said in a statement this month.<br/>