Ryanair CEO says 14 new routes would be added during the winter
Ryanair announced on Thursday that it flew 11m passengers in August, three quarters of the level the airline transported in August 2019 before the pandemic ravaged the industry.
The company’s CEO Michael O’Leary told Reuters that Ryanair was set to comfortably exceed its expectations of 10.5m travellers for August 2021.
O’Leary said that Ryanair expects to get close to 90% of capacity in September, and to return to pre-pandemic levels during October.
The boss said 14 routes would be added during the winter, which would help to created more than 500 new jobs for staff at its London airports.
“We think we are leading the recovery, not just here in the UK but in Europe … We’re seeing huge growth opportunities, and only we have the new aircraft deliveries coming to take up this growth,” O’Leary said.
“We might get close to 11 million in October, then you’re up to 90% of pre-Covid. As long as there’s no adverse Covid development, like a variant emerges that is vaccine resistant … we think we’ll be back to pre-Covid levels through November-February, and by next summer we’ll be growing significantly ahead of pre-Covid volumes.”
The Ryanair share price is up by 0.34% during the morning session on Thursday.
