get on board. So we don't have a perfect system for this. I mean, I remember back—you're too young—but I remember back 30 years ago you used to get on board aircraft, there'd be smoking sections at the back of the aircraft. There'd be 10 rows of seats and they're all smoking away. I mean, if somebody lit up a cigarette today, they'd be outraged, you know, they'd be arrested. We used to allow that, and I don't understand why do we allow people to drink to excess quantities. I'm not trying to ban drink at airports, but there should be a limit of two. And after you've had two alcoholic drinks, have a tea or a cup of coffee and behave yourself.
And you said that people are taking drugs on air. What drugs they take and how?
I don't know the specialties of the drugs they're taking.
How are they getting the drugs on board?
How do you think they're getting on board?
Is security not standing up? Are they not clamping down on this? You know, thorough security getting into an airport. How are drugs getting onto your plane?
I have no idea. But the imagination of some of our passengers, particularly those going to party towns—they may well have already imbibed the drugs before they get on board. You know, we can't body search people getting on board our aircraft. I mean, in the old days, God help us, 30 years ago when people were smoking on board planes, generally it would be they drink too much and they'd fall asleep. The combination today of drinks and other illicit substances mean they are high as kites, full of energy, and they misbehave. We have a reasonably zero tolerance policy. If the cabin crew are not happy with behavior passenger safety, we will divert the plane and offload the passengers. But we give the cabin crew—and our cabin crew do an outstanding job—they have the license to try to manage people. And if they think managing people is, you know, letting them be a little bit boisterous, that's fine, as long as they follow the instructions.
Which departure points are the worst offenders?
No, I mean, it would be unfair to single out departure points, but there are destinations that are the worst offenders. Ibiza is by far and away the worst offender during the summer. You get a little bit of it to the other Balearics, but Ibiza for some reason is, and then there's a couple of the Greek islands that are particularly poor as well.
Can I ask you, you said earlier there's been an upturn in fares in the last month. Yeah. Can you give any figures on that?
No, I mean, very modest. Fares have been falling. Our average fares have been falling month-on-month from February through to the end of July. But we noticed from the start of July fares have crept up very modestly. Yeah. But I think it's really the fact that they're not falling anymore, and we've seen a modest increase. You know, you're talking very low single digits, but it has turned positive instead. We're now having to do less discounting to fill flights and seeing a very modest upturn in fares during the month of August that has continued into September. And we would hope it will continue into the remainder of the winter period.
Just to clarify that, very low single digits, that's the year-on-year increase.
Very low single digits. But the more important thing is fares have stopped declining from about the end of July. They've now turned marginally positive through August and into the first half of September.
Sorry. Yeah. Can I ask, looking to protect the airline this winter, you know, you've kind of cut back on seats, but are you doing other things, for example, on hiring?
What do we need to protect the airline for? I mean, you know, we've cut back 2 million seats, so the traffic will be flat from November through to March. There's no real growth. 80% of our oil is hedged at $67 a barrel, so we're already well protected this winter. We're less protected into next summer, as are all of the other airlines who don't have—most of the airlines are well hedged to the end of October or to the end of December. We're well hedged to the end of March. I don't need to protect the airline. I mean, if the consensus is that for the full year out to the end of March Ryanair will make about 1.8, 1.9 billion, you know, God help us with that, who needs protection? Now, that will still be down; last year we did 2.2 or 2.3 billion. So profits will be down this year mainly because fares are down. But I always regard that as good news. Any year our profits are down because our fares are lower, it just means you're taking more market share from competitors and your customers are getting a better deal, and they won't forget that.
ESG has been removed from the 2027 pay incentive and replaced?
It hasn't been removed, but it's been downgraded. ESG was 20% of the score; it's now been downgraded to 10%, partly because the investors are less worried about ESG. It's become less important to investors, and we think customer service and on-time performance is a more key metric or performance metric the board set for those. ESG is also—having ESG targets in there when you're already rated A on climate score changes, we have the lowest emissions on a per-passenger basis of any airline in Europe. We are the only airline that pays all of our ETS on all of our traffic. So, we keep being repeatedly misreported as being one of the top 10 polluters in Europe, which we're not. We're actually the fourth airline in Europe, but the emissions of Lufthansa, BA, Air France-KLM on long haul, where they're exempt from ETS, are excluded. When you put those emissions in there, we are the fourth-largest airline in terms of CO2 emissions in Europe and by far and away the lowest on a per-passenger basis.
Aer Lingus is currently undergoing restructuring. Michael, what do you make of that, I suppose? And do you think that Aer Lingus has significantly benefited under IAG ownership? I mean, I imagine that without it, it could have been in a lot worse place, but what do you make of that and the potential impact it could have on your business if it cuts some of those routes that it's looking at?
Honestly, John, I don't pay any attention to what Aer Lingus is doing. Aer Lingus is so small in our overall universe. I think we're about half the traffic at Dublin Airport; I think Aer Lingus are about 20% to 25%. They're about half our size. They are vainly trying to compete with us on UK regional routes with turboprops—hopeless product, you know. But we wish Aer Lingus well, but we don't spend any time either thinking about it, worrying about it, or commenting on it.
I think when Willie first bought Aer Lingus, the expansion of the Aer Lingus operation on the transatlantics with A321s, with the narrow body, was the sensible thing to do. But trying to compete with Ryanair on going five times into Birmingham or Edinburgh with turboprops is a waste of time, but God bless them.
Just the mild upturn in airfares, is that do you think due to pulling out capacity or surcharges or what?
We think it is too early to say. I suspect that by the time you got to August, everybody was pretty much full at that stage. It's too early to say; it's too far in advance of where the winter schedule kicks in at the start of November. We don't know what it is, although it is welcome that fares are no longer falling and have turned modestly upwards from the start of August. When you get to the end of September, maybe they'll downturn again. I doubt it, because I think there is going to be very significant capacity constraints imposed by all airlines this winter. But the graveyard is full of people who lost money predicting where airfares were going to go. I think over the medium to longer term, our low airfares are going to stay flattish—up in a year when there's higher oil prices and down in a year when oil prices come back down again.
And then just on that, are you 100% sure it was the same issue from 2023, the rogue flight plan?
That's what NATS have told us: it was another rogue flight plan. Now, Martin Rolfe is out denying it yesterday, but in my view, I believe he's telling lies to save his own skin. Like, this is a guy who told the House of Parliament in 2023 after the first NATS collapse, 'This will not happen again. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event. Couldn't happen again.' They've had a failure in 2025 and another failure in 2026. And he also told the House of Parliament that NATS would have an effective backup system. Where was the backup system? This guy should be fired. He gets paid a basic salary of 500,000 and a bonus of nearly 900,000 a year to deliver the worst ATC service in Europe.
What we find impossible to reconcile is we are very critical of French ATC and German ATC when they're short-staffed or they go on strike, but the systems never fall down. Irish ATC, the systems never fall down. No other ATC provider in Europe has these system collapses. And the British have had three in three years run by the same guy. And then what does he do? He gets hauled in by Heidi Alexander yesterday for tea and probably chocolate biscuits and is asked to go away and prepare a report on his own latest screw-up. Why is he preparing his own report? Why is some failing student marking their own exam papers? So he should be fired and put somebody competent in there to run it. You've had three collapses of UK ATC systems in the last three years. You've had no collapses of the exact same systems in Spain, France, Germany, Ireland, anywhere else in Europe. And yet this person is still in a job.
Would you be optimistic that the system is going to be fixed now?
Under his leadership, I would have no confidence that system will be fixed. I think nothing will be done. He is clearly trying to kick for touch now. 'We'll commission an independent report, there'll be an investigation,' and it could take six months to report that there will be no changes.
I don't need a six months report. Please explain today why your backup system didn't work. Any system could have a failing. We have a big sales system here; it's based out of London, but we have a backup system ready to go in Frankfurt. So if something happens to our booking engine, we back it up straight away. What happens to UK ATC? They just collapse the whole thing. And then he starts hiding behind safety: 'Oh, our primary duty is safety.' Well, you can't deliver safety if you ground everything. Or maybe that's the way he thinks it should run: 'We'll keep you all safe by having you all stranded on the ground.' But the same guy making the same mistakes three years in a row is still in the same job.
Will you launch a separate legal action against this one, because the last one—
No, we'll add it to the existing legal action, which is coming up in the London courts at the end of October.
I think we can, because it evidences that this is not some act of God. This has now happened three times in three years, and we are due to be compensated.
Well, you would have already filed your statement of claim in the UK for that previous case. Can you just sort of change your statement of claim and add in this?
