RYANAIR LAST month became the first airline in Europe to carry eight million passengers in a single month.
Figures published yesterday show that Ryanair carried 8.08 million passengers in July, which it predicted would be more than Aer Lingus will handle on its short-haul network in the whole of this year.
The figure represented a 6 per cent year on year increase for Ryanair. Its load factor was one percentage point up at 89 per cent.
“It’s a milestone for Ryanair and for low cost airlines,” chief executive Michael O’Leary said at a press conference in Dublin yesterday.
Mr O’Leary criticised the Government for its recent decision not to scrap the €3 air travel tax and not to accept its offer to bring an additional five million passengers to Ireland over five years on the condition that airport charges for these people are set at zero.
“Ireland is losing out on the enormous growth that Ryanair continues to deliver to other airports in Europe,” he said. “Why are Irish airports and Irish tourism losing out on this growth?”
Mr O’Leary said Ryanair would not grow its services from Dublin, Cork or Shannon until the air tax was abolished and a “40 per cent increase in passenger charges” was reversed.
Earlier this week, Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar said the €3 travel tax would remain until next spring at least as airlines had not indicated to him their willingness to restore capacity or launch new routes from Irish airports.
An abolition of the tax had been offered by the Government as part of its jobs initiative if airlines were prepared to grow their traffic.
Mr O’Leary said he was prepared to continue to work on the issue with Mr Varadkar “at least . . . for another year”.
Mr O’Leary claimed that traffic at Dublin, Cork and Shannon would contract this year by one million passengers to 21.6 million, while Ryanair would grow its numbers to 75 million across Europe.
“While Ryanair grows, sadly Irish air traffic and tourism continues to decline because of the government’s travel tax and the DAA’s high airport fees. Every other country is seeing growth at its airports,” he said.
The Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) disputed Mr O’Leary’s claim yesterday that its passenger traffic would decline this year.
Ryanair said yesterday that it was cutting its schedule at Dublin Airport by 15 per cent this coming winter.
Mr O’Leary once again called for the DAA to be broken up, calling for Shannon and Cork airports to be sold off and the two terminals in the capital offloaded to competing operators.
The Ryanair boss cited the decision of competition bodies in the UK to force a breakup of the British Airport Authority.
Mr O’Leary said the DAA could continue to run the runway, shops and car parks.
“Even they can’t get that wrong,” he added.
He also restated his opposition to Dublin Metro being built and urged the Government to scrap this plan, which had been pursued by the previous Fianna Fáil-Green Party administration.
“A country that’s broke cannot waste €5 billion that it doesn’t have building a Noddy train set to Dublin Airport,” he said.
“There are no people stranded at Dublin Airport,” he added.
FACT OR FICTION? A CLOSER LOOK AT O'LEARY'S STATEMENTS
MICHAEL O’LEARY let loose at the usual suspects at a press conference in Dublin yesterday in his war of attrition over travel taxes and airport charges. And, as usual, he played fast and loose with the facts.
He said the Dublin Airport Authority had stopped publishing its monthly traffic figures.
That’s not quite right. Figures for Dublin airport – by far the biggest run by the DAA – are published on its website each month.
He said traffic at Dublin airport would decline this year.
Actually, it increased by 6 per cent in the first six months to nine million passengers.
O’Leary said the DAA’s current route incentive scheme at Dublin airport offered rebates on passenger charges relative to an airline’s market share. So, if Ryanair added one million passengers in Dublin this year it would only get a 40 per cent rebate to reflect its share of traffic there. The balance would be shared with other airlines.
In fact, at the behest of the new Government, the DAA changed these terms. Airlines are getting full rebates for all of their new traffic, albeit subject to some conditions.
O’Leary also launched a broadside against the Central Statistics Office, saying its first quarter visitor statistics were “horseshit”.
On May 26th, the CSO said visitor numbers to Ireland rose by 8.6 per cent in the period. O’Leary argued that this did not tally with figures for reductions in air capacity and reductions in passenger numbers at Irish airports during the period. Ferry numbers were also down so, unless “they’re swimming here”, the figures are rubbish, he argued.
Actually, the CSO figures also show that outbound traffic by Irish residents fell by 11.7 per cent. The CSO said that when aggregated, the number of trips was down 3 per cent in the quarter.
O’Leary had a cut at the CSO’s data-gathering, claiming only 20,000 passengers are polled.
Page four of the CSO’s Q1 release states that the sample size of the Q1 survey was 88,000.
O’Leary claimed he had received “no response” from the Government to his offer to bring an extra five million passengers to Ireland within five years.
“No written response was sent to Ryanair about their proposals, but the Minister spoke to Michael O’Leary last week about the matter,” the department told The Irish Times yesterday.