Ryanair revises traffic targets amid ongoing Boeing delivery delays
January 27, 2025
Although reporting a Q3 2024 post-tax profit of €149 million, helped by a 9% growth in traffic to a total of 45 million passengers, Ryanair’s hope of significantly extending its capacity for the upcoming summer season has had its wings clipped once more – with Boeing delivery delays continuing to bite.
As of 31 December 2024, Ryanair had 172 Boeing 737-8200 aircraft in its fleet. However, although Ryanair explained it continues to “work with Boeing to accelerate aircraft deliveries” (indeed, having visited the Seattle factory earlier this month), “we no longer expect Boeing to deliver sufficient aircraft ahead of [summer] 2025 to facilitate FY25 traffic growth to 210 million passengers,” explained the airline.
Although it remains “hopeful” that the remaining 29 units (from an orderbook of 210 737-8200s) will be delivered before March 2026 (allowing delayed traffic growth to be recovered in that year’s summer season), this year’s peak period will no longer reach the 210 million passenger total previously hoped for.
This is the second time in almost as many months Ryanair has cut its passenger forecast, having previously trimmed its passenger growth guidance in November to 210 million from an earlier 215 million. Noting at the time that “the risk of further delivery delays remains high,” it nevertheless stated it expected to carry 115.3 million passengers in the first half of 2025 – up from 105.4 million year-on-year – “subject to no worsening” of delivery delays.
Working with the assets it can realistically expect to be available, Ryanair instead now intends to reallocate what it terms “scarce capacity growth” across regions it believes are “investing in growth by cutting/abolishing aviation taxes, and incentivising traffic growth”. These include Poland, Sweden and Italy, with a total of 164 new routes now on sale.
However, despite capacity growth being curtailed, Ryanair nevertheless highlighted its advantage over many short-haul European operators currently struggling with capacity constraints: imposed, among other things, by delivery delays from both OEMs and ongoing Pratt & Whitney engine overhaul work.
Of the remaining 29 MAX 8s Ryanair has on order, eleven had previously been expected to be delivered in Q3 2024. However, with only two received, the airline clarified in November that it expected the other nine to “slip into Q4”. This did not happen, with just 17 MAX units delivered (to other operators) in December – rounding off a year massively adversely affected by ongoing production caps, increased FAA oversight and the lengthy IAM work stoppage.
