Ryanair ‘will not wait for anybody’ as Britons prepare for summer border chaos | The Travel Expert

Thank you. Sadly, no longer a young accountant. By the way, we're Europe's biggest airline, never mind biggest budget airline.

I think it sounds great. I mean, two reasons for the fall. One, fares are lower this summer than they were last year, and that's always good news for consumers. It means our traffic is growing strongly. We expect to grow by about 4% this year. We carry 28 million passengers last year. We expect to carry 260 million passengers this year, but at lower airfares. So, the good news is better deals than ever on Ryanair. The bad news is we've only hedged 80% of our fuel this year. So, we have 20% of our fuel is unhedged. The price of that doubled from about $70 a barrel to about $150 a barrel through April, May, and June. And so most of the fall in profits, which was a 38% decline in profits in the first quarter, was a result of this much higher oil prices on our unhedged fuel, but still giving away even cheaper fares than last year.

Well, they're booking. I mean, our traffic is still growing 6% in through the first quarter, but people are nervous. I mean there was all sorts of scare stories about Europe running out of fuel, airports would not have enough fuel. People were nervous on making bookings. I think as we move into the summer peak, they are traveling again, but they're price sensitive and they need to be stimulated and there's nobody better to stimulate low fare air travel than Ryanair.

It depends what happens in the long term to oil prices. I suspect what's going on in the Middle East will not be for the medium or long term. I think oil prices over the medium term will fall again. We're taking delivery. We've ordered 300 new aircraft. We take delivery of the first 15 of these Max 10 aircraft in the spring of next year. I would hope we'll continue to grow to 300 million passengers over the next 8 years. Keeping fares reasonably flattish. But there's no doubt if you look at our competitors across Europe, they all have very significant cost increases. They're all trying to cut capacity so they can pass it on in the form of higher airfares. We don't think that's the right way forward. We think the way forward is keep airfares low and keep people flying.

Well, I disagree. I mean, Europe, in my view, Simon, is inexorably moving towards four large airlines. So you'll have the BA family, Lufthansa family, the Air France family. All those guys want to do is put up airfares, charge you more for air travel. The Gulf carriers grounded has been a boon for them. They're charging outrageous airfares on their longhaul premium travel. But in Ryanair, we want to keep airfares low. We've committed to taking delivery of 300 new Max 10 aircraft costing about 30 billion in the next decade. So we have no choice but to keep growing. And the only way to keep growing is to keep fares low. The challenge for us is can we keep our cost low during that period of time, and I think with these new aircraft which are 40% more fuel efficient, we can keep our cost low and we can keep people flying across Europe at really affordable low airfares. To pick up on that, I don't know if you saw this week the boss of Emirates described his Boeing delivery, the Boeing planes that are coming in, as being only good for baked bean tins. Are you confident that your aircraft is going to be delivered on time and as you hope? Well, I'm meeting Boeing later this morning. In fact, here in London, they're over for the Farnborough Air Show. I mean, we're pretty confident. They still have to get them certified, but I think the Max 7 will be certified by the end of August and the Max 10 certified by the end of September, October. Our first 15 deliveries are in the spring of next year. So, January, February, March, April. We're pretty confident we'll get those aircraft. You know, you look around at aviation, internationally, the Boeing 737 is the most successful aircraft ever made. Half the world flies on a Boeing 737 every single year. So yes, we're confident these aircraft, they have development problems on the 777, the big expensive longhaul aircraft, but not on the 737. And I believe these new aircraft will transform not just Ryanair's ability to sell low fares for the next decade, but our ability to make more money selling low airfares for the next decade as well.

Well, the first 15 I think some we'll keep them at the main maintenance bases. So the first 59 will have probably five in Dublin and 10 in Stansted where we have all the engineers, the biggest pilot bases, etc. But once we get used to flying these over the next two or three years, they'll largely start off being distributed to the main bases, Dublin, Stansted, Bergamo, Madrid, Barcelona, probably Brussels, Charleroi, that kind of stuff. But once everybody's flown them, the pilots are getting used to flying them over the first year or two, they'll be distributed throughout the network. By the time we get to 2034, the end of the current order, we expect to have 300 of these aircraft. It'll be about 40% of a fleet of 800 aircraft at that stage.

Well, we're in the middle of the peak summer period. Firstly, it's not that bad. There are a number of black spots. We've identified 16 airports. It includes Lisbon, Madrid, Athens and Greece where it is particularly bad. It is unacceptable. I mean, firstly, this is another dumb regulation designed by Europe. The home of dumb regulations. They introduced it on the 1st of April. We have pleaded with them to defer the introduction to the 1st of November. Introduced it during the winter season, not the start of this busy summer season. No, it went ahead the start of the busy summer season. To be fair to the Europeans, they've allowed all of their countries to derogate and delay the introduction until the end of October, which is what they should do. But some countries don't want to be seen to be derogating. And so there are about 15 airports where there are real problems. Two to three-hour waits at border control, which to my mind is unacceptable. This is also something that should be done online. You don't need border guards doing their one-digit typing into systems with a big queue building. Everybody puts their details on the Ryanair website. That should be the vehicle by which if you need EES or passport information, the airlines should provide it to the border control, you run into the GDPR nonsense as usual. We should be automating all this and taking it online. If you go to the US, the ESTA process, which is the same, basically the same is all done online before you fly. And the EES should be done the same way. If I'm a passenger though, let's say at Milan Bergamo and I am stuck in a mile long queue and my aircraft is over there, how long are you going to be waiting for me? And if you can't wait for me, what am I going to do? Nothing. We will not wait for anybody. If you're stuck at an entry passport, our priority is to those passengers who are at the boarding gate when boarding gate starts. If you're not at the boarding gate when we finish boarding, the plane is going without you. What rights have you got in that? You don't have any, which is regrettable, but we're not delaying our flights for people who are stuck in passport controls. They have to show up at the airport earlier, but they have to be at the boarding gate, otherwise they're not flying.

Well, firstly, what Europe has done is yet another dumb regulation that doesn't work. The European Parliament, which is a circus of fools generally, have come up with a new set of regulations, by the way, at a time when they want Europe to be more competitive. They have sold it. All they have done is they said if airlines are advertising an airfare, the airfare must include the free second carry-on bag. So overnight you'll make the European airlines look even less competitive than they are today. Our lowest fare today is $19.99. If you want to bring a carry-on bag, the lowest fare we'll be able to advertise going forward in 18 months time with these stupid regulations will be $79.99, but with a big strap line underneath it you can reduce this by another 60 quid if you don't bring the second carry-on bag. Now the point the airlines have made, and it's not just Ryanair, all the European airlines, there is not enough space on board our aircraft for two bags per passenger. About 45% of our passengers can bring a second bag. We manage that by selling them a priority boarding service which gets you to board first and you bring the second, but that's closed off at 45% of the plane. 5% of passengers choose today they want the lowest airfare. And of course for the morons in the European Parliament, they don't care what people want. They have no idea what's going on in the real world. 99.99% of passengers want to know what's the lowest airfare. If the lowest airfare excludes a second carry-on bag, they're quite happy to travel without the second carry-on bag, and they do so daily in their millions. So, all we have here is another dumb regulation coming out of the European Parliament. The regulation doesn't work. All it does now is require this mad requirement that European airlines will now have to engage in false advertising. We'll now have to advertise higher airfares than are actually available in the system for people who want the lowest airfare. This was a solution to a problem that didn't exist because some European parliamentarian was told to check in his bag or something about two years ago. It is nonsense. There's more daft regulation coming out of the home of daft regulations in Brussels.

I mean, again, it's another stupid regulation out of the European Union. We have said, look, we'd never charge for the children sitting with a parent, but if the parent wants to select a seat, which they clearly have to do, everybody who chooses a seat on board Ryanair, you can choose a 3 euro seat in the middle to back of the aircraft. Most parents I know choose to sit up in the front with their children where they pay. Now, what we've said, the European, oh no, that's against the law. Parents traveling with children must have a free seat. Okay, they can have a free seat. They can have it down in the 3 euro section. Most parents actually will not want to travel down in the 3 euro section, but that'll be free and they will choose now to move to the front of the aircraft or to the overwing exit where they have more space and they will happily pay for themselves and the children. So it's again another stupid regulation from people who don't understand what's going on in the real world of air travel. Speaking personally as a parent of four teenagers, I would happily pay to have my children sitting as far away from me as possible on board the aircraft. Again, look, Europe has a huge and the UK, we have a new government here. We need to be competitive. We need to get our economies back growing again. And the way to do that is to lower the cost of air travel. We were the first people to start charging for bags 10, 15 years ago. And it has transformed the economics of air travel. In the old days, everybody had two bags. You arrived at the airport, you stood in a long queue to hand check over your bags, someone gave you a piece of paper so they could take your bags to give it to you on the arrival airport. Unless of course you were flying with some of our competitors, you'd never see your bag again. We got rid of all that crap 15 years ago when you could start checking in online. The only benefit of checking in online is don't bring any bags and then you have this wonderful experience. You arrive at the airport, you don't have to queue at a check-in desk. You go straight through security. On arrival, you don't have to hang around a bloody carousel looking at all the other morons standing at the carousel waiting for their bag, unless you flew BA in which case you'll never see your bag again. Air travelers have become liberated by getting rid of these stupid bags. Airport security is a much faster experience at any Ryanair airport because we aggressively limit the amount of free carry-on bags. You go through an American airport, they're pulling bags off, they're strapping bags, it takes forever to get through security. You go to Stansted, you go to Gatwick, straight through security because people are not carrying ridiculous amounts of carry-on baggage. This is the way forward and that is why we carried last year, 28 million people chose to fly with Ryanair. And a couple of dumb bureaucrats in Brussels think they know better. No, we don't.

I don't think anything at all. The only poll that matters is on election day. This year, Ryanair will carry 216 million passengers. EasyJet, which is a very good but expensive airline, will carry about 100 million passengers. We out carry them more than 2 to 1. So, I don't have any difficulty with people expressing preferences at polls. There's probably people out there who think Farage is the future for the UK economy despite the abject failure of Brexit. Look, when people come to fly, 99.99% of people want to know what's the cheapest airfare and they book and travel Ryanair. Do we satisfy everybody? Absolutely not. Do we piss some people off? Of course we do. But day after day in market after market, we out carry and out compete EasyJet, Wizz Air, BA, everybody. People will choose Ryanair. And as long as they keep choosing Ryanair, we'll keep doing what we do.

I don't think they're great. If you look at the announcements yesterday, it was all back to the future nonsense. That the last 40 years have been a mistake. You should have been in the UK here in the 60s and 70s when the IMF were running the economy, rubbish piling high in the streets, and it was the sick man of Europe. The last government got elected, Starmer and Rachel Reeves, we got elected, we're going to deliver growth, growth. I wrote to Rachel Reeves sent her two letters. The way to deliver growth here, one of the things you should do is abolish APD. You have this ludicrous 15 pound tax on air travel on and off an island on the periphery of Europe. If you really believe in growth, abolish APD and stand back while there's an invasion of visitors and tourists coming here, not just to London, but to airports all over the UK. I got back some stupid letter from the Treasury signed by James Murray, who should have known better. Oh, £15 APD is only 1% of the average economy airfare. I mean, clearly he's never flown with any other than BA or something. I had to send him back an explanation how to do maths. Our average airfare is 45 quid. £15 APD is 33% rate of tax on that. And I sent this back and said, 'You clearly don't live in the real world.' He never replied. He got sent off to the health department. But this is the kind of stupidity you're dealing with in treasury orthodoxy. None of them have a clue how to deliver growth. If Europe or the UK wants to deliver growth, start with air travel. Air travel drives tourism and economic activity. It fills hotels, it fills restaurants. And we in the UK have this stupid policy of taxing people when they choose to travel. That's why so many people avoid the UK now. You can avoid the 15 pound APD by traveling somewhere else in Europe. Scrap APD and stand back and watch real growth get delivered here instantaneously.

Well, good luck with that as you try to get to your holidays in Portugal or Spain or Italy. Look, the environmental lobby have fundamentally lost this argument. For all the pious pie in the sky nonsense, you still live on an island on the periphery of Europe. The only way on and off that island for millions of people is air travel. Yes, we do need to decarbonize air travel, but we're doing that by investing in new aircraft technology that burns 40% less fuel per passenger. Taxing people to come on and off this island is not the way forward. And I would point to the environmental lobby: go to Sweden, the home of Greta Thunberg, the home of flight shaming and all that nonsense a decade ago. Students who should have spent more time in school instead of out there mitching school protesting. They have a new transport minister up there. They've abolished aviation taxes. They're reducing ATC fees and our airport Stockholm is one of the fastest growing airports in Europe this year. Taxing air travel just sends the business to a competitor country somewhere else. Abolishing air tax on air travel, which is what you should do, brings loads of new routes, traffic, visitors to your country, and that's what the UK needs to do. So if Andy Burnham is serious about growth, although I didn't hear any mention of growth in his speech, he was going on about solving homelessness. We didn't elect people here to solve homelessness. Homelessness in a country of 60 million people is a tragedy, but it will always be with us. You may as well try and solve drug use or the war on drugs has been equally unsuccessful. Deliver growth. That's what you got elected to do. When the election comes around in 3 years time, people will vote based on the economy and how it's doing. And if all you're going to come up with is nonsense about homelessness and putting a cap of two quid on bus fares instead of three quid on buses, you're not going to deliver growth. You're going to deliver more chaos.