Ryanair Holdings PLC has said it will reduce its forecasts for passenger numbers next year because of delays to deliveries from Boeing, its main plane supplier.
Talking to Reuters, Michael O’Leary, the airline’s chief executive, said if an expected 20 planes due this year come through in the first two months of 2025 that would be manageable.
“The big issue for Ryanair is we’re due 30 aircraft in March, April, May and June of next year, and how many of those will we get?” O’Leary said in the interview.
“I think we’re clearly going to walk back our traffic growth for next year because I don’t think we’re going to get all those 30 aircraft,” he added.
Advertisement
Capacity constraints in the sector are becoming a major problem as both Boeing and Airbus struggle to meet delivery targets due to parts shortages and other supply chain issues.
British Airways this week confirmed it was rescheduling or cancelling scores of flights due to problems getting parts for the Rolls-Royce engines on its long-haul planes.
O’Leary added the airline wanted to avoid a situation where it took on the overheads for fifty aircraft but only got 30, a situation that pushed costs up sharply at the airline this year, he said.
The Ryanair boss added he was having weekly talks with Boeing’s operations chief Stephanie Pope about delivery and would meet with chief executive Kelly Ortberg shortly.
As well as ongoing reliability issues, Boeing is now having to deal with a second month of strikes at its plants and recently laid off 17,000 staff to save costs, a move O’Leary described as sensible.
