Ryanair CEO sees high single digit air fare rise in 'very strong' summer

Ryanair is expecting a very strong summer season with a reasonable prospect of average European short-haul air fares rising by a high single digit percentage, CE Michael O'Leary said Thursday. Ryanair hiked its profit forecast for the year to end-March earlier in January after a strong Christmas season, meaning it is set to easily top the E1b annual profit it made before two years of COVID-19 losses. "The outlook for the summer at the moment is very strong, strong booking, strong pricing," the CEO of Europe's largest airline by passenger numbers said in an interview after announcing new routes from Italy. O'Leary said bookings over the first weeks of 2023 were strong as well as for the February mid-term and Easter holidays, although pricing for the first three months of the year will be a "little bit softer" than pre-COVID levels before picking up. "I think there is a reasonable prospect that this summer again we will see high-single digit price increases, certainly for short-haul European air travel," he said, despite risks from new variants of the coronavirus and adverse developments in Ukraine. Ryanair's summer plans will also be boosted by hopes that by the end of May it will receive 40 to 45 of 51 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft due for delivery, O'Leary said.<br/>