Ryanair target for the next decade

[airazurxtror]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... ecade.html

Ryanair plans to poach tens of millions of customers from legacy carriers such as British Airways, Iberia and Lufthansa over the next decade to grow its traffic by more than half to 120m passengers.

Ryanair expects to carry more than 79m passengers this year.
The self-styled “ultra low cost carrier” intends to further stamp its dominance on the European aviation industry by attracting an extra 41m passengers and increasing its market share to almost a fifth over the next ten years.
Ryanair is already Europe’s biggest airline ahead of Lufthansa and easyJet, with a market share of 12pc.
But Michael O’Leary, the airline’s chief executive, believes it can replicate the success of Southwest Airlines in the US, which has 128m passengers and a market share of just over 20pc.

“Growth potential is almost unlimited,” said Mr O’Leary said. “If you take short haul per capita...you can see untapped growth available in large markets like Spain, the UK, Sweden, Belgium, Germany where we think there are significant opportunities.”

He added: “A lot of the growth will come from high fare, loss-making short-haul flights currently operated by the flag carriers switching over to Ryanair.”
Ryanair also expects to benefit from further airlines going to the wall after the recent closures of bmibaby, Italy’s WindJet and OLT Express in Poland.

Ryanair was sitting on a record cash pile of €3.9bn at the half-year stage, which ended on September 30, although this will be reduced by the payment of a €489m special dividend on November 30.
Ryanair has raised its profits guidance for the full-year to €490m-€520m from a previous estimate of €400m- €440m.

A personal comment : it feels good flying on such a strong and well-established company, with a drive and a vison of its future - and working for such a sound outfit.

[cathay belgium]

Hi,

Lot of positive talks, but we'll see as their fares raises,...
The crisis is not over yet, nothing positive to see in the near future...
Windjet,OLT and Bmibaby don't had the pax for a raise to this level,..
And besides we still have also easyjet,.. who's thinking in the same directions and they are more used to fight the regular airlines which are coming to fr level,..ib express,af express,transavia,germanwings,flybe,...
Besides I know and saw a northern company which ordered for the next decade 300 737 's..
As much as FR now and they need to fly these also... norwegian,anyone ?

Small talk of FR, interesting times ahead in the next decade,..

Old pains,.. governments seeking money,reduce costs,raise taxlevels,..how long before the see FR getting more then paying... how will they deal with this..
My opinion : fly FR now because the top is already in sight,and pax levels will start dropping soon..

cxb

[Inquirer]

fly FR now because the top is already in sight,and pax levels will start dropping soon..

I don't know if their pax levels will start dropping off like you say, cathay belgium, but what is a given is that their fares are going to have to go up even further than they have already done in the past: already now Ryanair is no longer the unique LoCo it was before and this year they even have the very questionable reputation to being Europe's most expensived airline.

As the price gap between them and their competitors unquestionably narrows for the second year in a row, their growth curve will start hitting the ceiling because their product comes with all too many annoyances which are only taken for what they are if there's a significant price incentive with their nearest alternative.

That incentive is still there at present, but it is narrowing year after year and they are going to find it impossible to keep it at today's levels in future because fuelprices are a factor they have no control over whatsoever and the exploding fuel bill is going to make up an ever bigger portion of total operating cost of all airlines, making it impossible for them to keep offering significant price incentives over their competitors in the long run, especially because as you mention they are also under significant pressure to accept higher non-fuel related costs from other sides as well (taxes, fees, states, courts etc) and will be unable to fight off all of them.

I think the long term trend of short haul aviation is pretty clear: the future does not belong to the Ryanair type of operators any longer, but rather to the Easyjet/Air Asia type of operators and in all fairness I think they know it too.They very well know their operating costs are going to explode over the next few years and thus have no other option but to try to outpace this increase by ever more revenues, yet as recent history has show, they seem to be forced to do so by outright price increases even: the thing is that every price increase is killing their unique business model a little bit more, so if you see them do it, it means they have huge problems offsetting the cost increases by just selling more tickets like they ideally would want to do! Definitely not a good sign for an airline that needs 'unlimited' growth opportunities as a cornerstone of its business plan in the long run.

Does that mean ryanair is in trouble? Not at all, but it means their very best days are already mostly behind them: a few more years of growth and then stagnation is what lays ahead of them, unless they seriously turn their business around and start to offer much higher frequencies and offer more quality, but that's simply impossible for them to do as it will give them a cost situation which is likely higher than that of an Easyjet for instance, given they have all too many little bases all over Europe and thus have a very inefficient production setup to start with.

Give it a decade and Ryanair is not going to be the shining star it pretends to be today: I'd rather bet all my money on Easyjet for that, if I'd have some to spare, that is.

[Jetbob]

Customer service does not involve dumping passengers on the wrong island and so on...

Once Ryanair tries to be more like SouthWest Airlines ( "Real"service and connecting flights ) it can grow much bigger !. But as long the money roles inn, why change ?.

[danieln]

Not a word anymore about the plans to fly transatlantic...

[cnc]

A personal comment : it feels good flying on such a strong and well-established company, with a drive and a vison of its future - and working for such a sound outfit.

lol not even MOL could say such crap

[Charlie Roy]

And where will they get aircraft from? Old non-737 planes from failing airlines? Not very Ryanair that...