Ryanair narrows losses to £300m and expects to fly back into profitability this financial year
Budget airline Ryanair said this morning it has narrowed annual losses of £302m and hopes to return to “reasonable profitability” in its current financial year.
However, chief executive Michael O’Leary said it was “impractical, if not impossible” to give guidance for 2022-23 due to the risk to holiday bookings from Covid and the Ukraine war.
The group’s loss for the year to March 31 was smaller than expected and narrowed from the £867m losses seen the previous year, when trading was badly impacted by the pandemic.
Ryanair said traffic recovered strongly as it carried 97.1 million guests, up from just 27.5 million the year before thanks to the lifting of pandemic restrictions.
It said it hopes to boost this further to 165 million passengers this year – ahead of the 149 million record level seen pre-Covid, but that it was still having to slash prices to secure bookings amid ongoing uncertainty.