Ryanair reports record E1.9b profit as Amber Rudd joins board

Ryanair has reported record annual profits of E1.9b as the Irish airline announced the appointment of former UK home secretary Amber Rudd to its board and said summer fares would be lower than previously expected. Profits after tax increased by more than a third in the year to the end of March compared with the previous year as the number of passengers increased by 9% to 184m – 23% above the heights reached before the pandemic. The Dublin-listed company said it expected to carry as many as 200m passengers in the current financial year, but added that the prices it could charge were lower than expected in recent weeks. Ryanair said it expected prices to be “flat to modestly ahead of last summer”, but that “recent pricing is softer than we expected”, pushing it to offer lower fares to attract customers. Rudd was energy and climate change secretary under David Cameron and then home secretary for nearly two years under Theresa May, before resigning in 2018 in relation to the scandal over the mistreatment of the Windrush generation of migrants to the UK. She did not seek re-election in 2019. Rudd, who was an investment banker before becoming an MP, has since worked for public relations companies, as an adviser to Darktrace, a cyber-security company that is being bought by a US private equity investor, and on the board of the British Gas owner, Centrica. She joins Ryanair as a non-executive director on 1 July.<br/>