DUBLIN: Ryanair’s bid to become one of the world’s biggest airlines will focus on higher-frequency routes and more domestic flights in core European markets rather than venturing further afield, its chief commercial officer said in an interview.
Already Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, selling over 80 million tickets last year, Ryanair is targeting 50 percent growth in passengers by 2019 and has placed orders for 380 new Boeing planes.
Most growth will come from increasing capacity in core European markets like Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom rather than breaking into new markets like the former Soviet Union and Middle East.
“A lot of the growth is going to be relatively unspectacular in appearance, but spectacular in size,” said Ryanair’s David O’Brien, who is in charge of doing deals with airports to add to the airline’s 1,600 routes.
In a bid to woo the lucrative business traveller, who has shunned the airline’s traditional hair-shirt offering, Ryanair in recent months has cut fees, allowed extra carry-on luggage and improved its coffee.
The focus over the next year is to give business travellers many more short-haul routes with at least two flights a day and more planes going to capital cities, while the number of domestic routes will increase significantly.
“That is quite boring and low key, but that is where the real opportunity in growth is to come from,” O’Brien said.
Ryanair estimates that around 20 million of its 83 million annual passengers are business travellers and aims to increase that number to between 30 million and 36 million.
In recent months Ryanair has discussed expanding into several markets beyond the European Union’s deregulated Open Skies area, whose establishment in the 1990s set the stage for the spectacular growth of low-cost carriers like Ryanair. It has bid for Cyprus airlines, to use its routes beyond the European Union and management have floated the idea of routes to Russia and a hub in Israel.
But with five operating planes in Cyprus, it is never going to be a core offering, O’Brien said. Russia, where the airline may start operating next year, would only be two routes to Ireland.
Reuters
