A plane of the Ryanair company landed at the airport of the Spanish city of Barcelona on July 1, 2022
Low-cost airline Ryanair returned to profit for its full year ending in March, thanks to a “strong rebound in traffic” and rising prices as passengers continued to travel despite inflation.
The Irish company posted a net profit of 1.4 billion euros ($1.515 million) in its 2022/23 financial year, compared with a loss of 355 million euros a year earlier, it announced on Monday.
This is despite the fact that operating costs have increased by 75%, it said in a statement.
“We’ve seen a very strong recovery in post-Covid traffic” and it is “now 13-14% higher than our pre-Covid volumes, but profitability is still a bit down,” summarized its CEO Michael O’Leary told.
During the period April 2022 to March 2023, Ryanair aims to double its turnover to €10.8 billion, and increase its traffic by 74%, to around 170 million passengers.
For their part, prices rose by 10% compared to levels before the health crisis.
“Demand for leisure travel looks strong in Europe this summer” and “European consumers prefer travel to other forms of entertainment, despite the weight of inflation on consumer spending,” said Oli Anibaba, an analyst at Third Bridge.
Ryanair reported profits in the first three quarters of last year, but the company noted it was in the red in the fourth with a loss of 154 million euros.
Ryanair thus became the last European aviation giant to report a return to positive results in the wake of Iberia and IAG—parent company of British Airways, among other companies—French-Dutch conglomerate Air France-KLM and German Lufthansa.
However, its low-cost rival EasyJet, punished last year by staff shortages as a result of the pandemic, has yet to return to profit.
