Ryanair sees very strong summer if no COVID setback

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A Ryanair aircraft lands on the southern runway at Gatwick Airport in Crawley, Britain, August 25, 2021. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

By Conor Humphries

DUBLIN (Reuters) -Ryanair expects huge pent-up demand to lead to strong summer trading with higher ticket prices if the recovery is not thrown off course by a new COVID variant, Group Chief Executive Michael O'Leary said on Monday.

But he said the budget airline remained cautious and was currently cutting prices aggressively to try to restore passenger numbers to pre-pandemic levels by March.

O'Leary was speaking to investors after Ryanair reported a loss of 96 million euros ($107 million) for the final three months of 2021, in line with a consensus estimate of a 101 million euros loss in a company poll of analysts.

The Irish airline, Europe's largest by passenger numbers, reiterated its forecast for a loss of between 250 million and 450 million euros for its full financial year ending March 31.

O'Leary said passenger numbers should recover rapidly from 6-7 million in January to 8-9 million in February and 11-12 million in March - reaching pre-COVID levels for that month.

The airline plans to fly 14% more passengers over the summer than it did in the summer of 2019, he added.

While he remained wary of fresh COVID disruption, O'Leary said if there was not another setback by the Easter holidays in April he would be cautiously optimistic about the summer.

"There is a strong recovery underway but we need to get to ... and through Easter without there being any negative COVID developments and in those circumstances we think we will be set fair for a very strong summer recovery," he said.

While it was too soon to forecast summer fare levels, O'Leary said they should be helped by the likelihood of around 10% less short-haul capacity than in the summer of 2019.

"With the combination of less capacity short-haul and higher oil prices, I struggle to see why ... there won't be a strong pricing recovery - certainly into the peak summer months" so long as there are no negative COVID developments, he said.