THERE WAS LOTS of good news for Ryanair today.
The budget airline released details of its performance for February and passenger numbers are up 29% from this time last year, with 5.8 million passengers carried compared to 4.5 million this time last year.
Rolling year-on-year traffic is up 9% to 89.1 million passengers as the figures inch ever closer to the hallowed 100 million mark.
Meanwhile load factors (basically a measure of how cost-efficient an airline is) increased by 11% to 89%.
“We’re delivering so much more than just the lowest fares in every market we operate in,” said head of marketing Kenny Jacobs.
The airline has also announced the purchase of an additional three aircraft, bringing their current stock of Boeing 737-800 planes to 183. The planes will be delivered in early 2016.
Finally, the company revealed it had secured €850 million in funding at very low cost via an eight-year bond issue at 1.125% (to put this in perspective the same amount was raised last June, but for seven years and at 1.875%).
The bond issue was more than three times over-subscribed which gives an indication of the level of esteem investors hold for the budget airline.
This money will be most immediately used to fund the new fleet of 200 Boeing MAX 200 planes that the airline announced yesterday, aircraft that CEO Michael O’Leary sees as ’gamechangers’ for the future.
These orders will see us expand our fleet to over 520 aircraft and increase our passengers carried to 160 million per year by 2024, he said.
O’Leary claims the increase in traffic will see Ryanair create 10,000 new jobs for pilots, cabin crew and engineers over the next ten years.
Ryanair yesterday announced a new customer charter for 2015 as part of its ‘Always Getting Better’ (seeming less mean to customers) plan.
Some of the reforms announced as part of the company’s eight-point plan include the ability to ‘hold’ a fare for 24 hours for €5, lower penalties for airport check-in, and new staff uniforms from a ‘young European designer’.
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