The budget carrier flew 47.5 million passengers in the third quarter of the financial year
A Ryanair Boeing 737 in flight(Image: )
Ryanair saw third-quarter profits tumble as it set aside money for a competition fine in Italy, but upped its full-year outlook for passenger growth.
The Irish budget airline saw pre-tax profits plunge 83 per cent to €24.4m euros (£21.2m) as it put aside the provision following a €256m fine by Italy’s competition watchdog for allegedly using an “abusive strategy” to hinder third-party travel agencies.
Ryanair said it was “confident” the fine would be overturned on appeal. With the provision stripped out, underlying net profits fell 22 per cent to €115.4m.
It flew 47.5 million passengers in the third quarter, up six per cent year on year, and said it now expects 2025-26 passenger growth of four per cent to almost 208 million due to strong demand and earlier than expected Boeing plane deliveries. This is up from previous guidance for 207 million passengers.
In a statement to the stock market, the carrier said it had allocated Ryanair’s “scarce capacity” to regions and airports cutting aviation taxes and incentivising traffic growth, such as Albania, Italy, Morocco, Slovakia and Sweden, by switching flights and routes away from what it described as “high cost, uncompetitive markets” including Austria, Belgium, Germany and regional Spain.
“Industry capacity constraints, combined with our widening cost advantage, strong balance sheet, low-cost aircraft orderbook and industry leading ops resilience will, we believe, facilitate Ryanair’s controlled profitable growth to 300 million passengers p.a. by FY34,” the company said.
Ryanair said it was “cautiously guiding” full-year expectations in the range of €2.13bn to €2.23bn.
“The final FY26 outcome remains exposed to adverse external developments in Q4, including conflict escalation in Ukraine and the Middle East, macro-economic shocks and any further impact of repeated European ATC strikes and mismanagement,” Ryanair added.
The results come days after Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary thanked tech billionaire Elon Musk for the publicity following an online spat on social media platform X.
The Tesla founder had implied that he could buy Ryanair and called Mr O’Leary “insufferable” after Mr O’Leary rejected the idea of using Mr Musk’s Starlink tech to provide wifi on board flights.
“If he wants to call me an idiot, he wouldn’t be the first, and he certainly won’t be the last … But if it helps to boost Ryanair sales, you could insult me all day, every day,” Mr O’Leary said at a press conference last week.
