the court in I think in about at the end of this month for permission for for the case comes up in about a month's time and we think the events of this week will be very helpful towards our case. You know at NATS ATC it was an act of God, it never happened before. Well, it's now happened three times in the last 3 years and it doesn't happen in any other ATC system. So we think regrettably that the events of this week which caused us to cancel, I mean Ryanair is the biggest airline in the UK, we had to cancel nearly 300 flights, loss of about 60,000 passengers, but hundreds of thousands of passengers have had their travel disrupted. We think will certainly enhance and assist our case.
followed by the easy. What does that mean for your
Not a lot. I mean, you know, somebody buys a high fair competitor. I think it's just it says more to the inevitable consolidation process among the EU airlines. We have been for a number of years forecasting that Europe will finish up with four large airlines as they have in the States: three large connecting carriers—Lufthansa, BA, Air France-KLM—and one large low fare, and that's going to be Ryanair. So Wizz, easyJet, airBaltic may well collapse this winter. They're borrowing 270 million at the moment at 25% interest rates. I think most of those airlines will either disappear or will be the subject of M&A over the next couple of years as TAP is currently—the Portuguese government are negotiating to sell it to either Lufthansa or Air France. So it's just another inevitable part of the consolidation process, which makes it all the more important that Ryanair buys another 300 aircraft from Boeing, that we keep growing over the next decade because we're the only ones that's going to keep the high-fare guys honest in Europe. We're going to keep growing, keep airfares down, and keep Europe moving.
We hope, and Boeing seem to be reasonably confident, sometime before the end of October by the FAA. And if that is the case, we would then hope that the European authorities will certify it before the end of the calendar year. We're due our first delivery—our first MAX 10 aircraft is due in January next year, three in February, four in March. And so we will have 15 of those aircraft operating probably out of Dublin and Stansted for the summer 2027 schedule.
No, none. I mean there's no aircraft availability, either Boeing or Airbus, anywhere in the world at the moment. Frontier have returned some aircraft recently, but they've been placed straight away. There's a worldwide shortage of aircraft, worldwide shortage of engines, so there's really no spare aircraft out there at the moment.
Look, H2 for us is the December and March quarters. Who knows? We don't. Pricing was down about 4% in the first quarter. We expect pricing to be very modestly down in the second quarter, but the December and March quarters are entirely up in the air. We have announced we're going to fly less seats this winter. We've reduced the full-year traffic target from 216 million to 214 million. That reduces our exposure to the 20% of unhedged oil in the winter schedule. But if oil stays up at $149 a barrel, I would expect pricing to move upwards during the winter season. I hope it won't, and I hope we'll be able to keep pricing low.
No, no, no. I think we've published the winter schedule now. That's it. We've taken about two and a half, three million seats out of the winter schedule, mainly weaker stuff on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Saturday evenings, Sunday mornings. But other than that, that's it. The winter schedule is now published and on sale.
against your bonus that you've negotiated. What's your response to that?
Well, firstly, I haven't negotiated a bonus. I have a share option scheme which I won't get unless I double the share price over the next 5 years. Proxy firms do what proxy firms do, and the good news is that the shareholders, I think by a majority almost two to one, have voted in favor of it. So clearly they want me to stay.
A lot of people voting against it.
Well, a two-to-one majority in favor would suggest pretty ringing endorsement.
And with Mr. Trump on the way, what do you want our political leadership to say?
God knows. I want our political leadership to get on here and fix the infrastructure around Dublin Airport. Stop wasting 20 billion on a useless train track, a useless train link from Dublin Airport to Ranelagh. The money would be far better spent either building a bridge across Dublin Bay, a tunnel under Dublin Bay, and building an outer ring road and M75 that would actually relieve the enormous congestion of traffic around Dublin in general. They would all be self-financing because roads and bridges are tolled and pay for themselves. But that would be an intelligent solution, and we don't have a government that delivers too many intelligent solutions.
I'm still waiting for them, by the way, to deliver on their promise to scrap the Dublin Airport cap nearly 2 years after they were elected. So, I wouldn't hold my breath on our glorious political leadership doing anything useful.
And are you worried about that drone?
Yeah. Some Aer Lingus pilot thought he saw a drone. I thought I saw a pussycat. I wouldn't mind Aer Lingus pilots; they're not the most reliable in the world. Ryanair pilots are much more reliable. We didn't see anything.
