Ryanair to raise air fares after lower ticket prices hit profits

Ryanair has said air fares will head back up this summer after a year of lower fares saw the budget airline’s profits fall 16%.

Europe’s biggest airline carried just over 200 million passengers in 2024-25 with ticket prices down 7% to fill its planes, after a dispute halted bookings from some online agents, reducing full-year profits to €1.6bn (£1.4bn).

However, it expects fares to rise by about 5%-6% in 2025’s peak season, and Easter already brought a leap of 15% in the first quarter.

Michael O’Leary, the airline’s chief executive, said full-year results were “very good in the context of last year, where we had the row with the OTAs [online travel agents] and fares fell 7% – it’s a remarkably robust set of numbers”.

He said that the airline had made about €8 per passenger, with costs growing exactly in line with passenger numbers, claiming: “The cost gap between us and all of our competitors is getting wider.”

Ryanair is paying out about €400m in dividends this year. O’Leary said profits would rise and be buoyed up by lower jet fuel prices.

O’Leary said the airline group could divert upcoming Boeing deliveries to the UK rather than its main European airline to avoid tariffs, if necessary. Ryanair is its biggest customer in Europe but deliveries of the 737 Max 8 model have been delayed, after fraught years of problems at the US plane manufacturer.

He said of Boeing’s “situation on the ground has significantly improved”, but Ryanair awaits 29 more aircraft for next summer’s schedule which could be delivered this autumn and “that could run the risk of running into tariffs again”.

O’Leary said that he believed Donald Trump was “trying to walk his way back from the tariffs as best he can” with Europe, but added: “We have fixed-price contracts with Boeing – tariffs will be an issue for Boeing’s account, not for ours, but we will work with Boeing to try to find ways around them.

“The trade deal between the US and the UK looks like it won’t apply tariffs on commercial aircraft – we have the option with Boeing of taking those deliveries on to a UK register, rather than a European register, bypassing any tariff risk.”

He said the delays had left Ryanair “a little bit cash rich at the moment” and “surplus cash will return to shareholders”, and a €750m share buy-back would start next week.

Keir Starmer’s reset with Europe would be positive for Ryanair, O’Leary said, especially regarding passport e-gates and a possible youth mobility scheme: “Anything that reduces friction between the UK and Europe, we will be all in favour of – particularly some of the really stupid stuff, like passengers arriving in Europe going through the non European channels.”