Low-cost airline Ryanair is exercising options to buy three more Boeing 737-800 aircraft at a cost of $120 million (€136 million) and is also in discussions with three airports about the location of a $10 million flight simulator, chief executive Mr Michael O'Leary has said.
Mr O'Leary was speaking at the Ryanair a.g.m. where he also launched another barrage of criticism at the proposal by the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, for a new mechanism to allocate airline slots at Dublin Airport.
"It's typical of her approach that she comes up with an utterly useless solution," he said.
"The airlines have written to her as one saying that they don't want slot regulation. There is no congestion on the runways; the congestion is in the terminal building," said Mr O'Leary. He repeated that, if given the goahead, Ryanair could build its own £9 million (€11.4 million) terminal with 14 gates and have it operational within 10 months.
Aer Rianta was once again the focus for criticism from the Ryanair chief executive, who described current conditions at Dublin Airport as "shambolic". "They've spent £50 million on a five-storey extension which nobody wants to use," he said, adding that the new baggage hall was "something designed by Russian architects".
"Pier C was designed by Aer Rianta to win an architectural competition rather than serve the needs of airlines. We're not using it because it's not big enough, we need space for eight aircraft, it has space for five." At the sparsely-attended a.g.m. - where shareholders were outnumbered by journalists, photographers, accountants and PR men - Mr O'Leary said Ryanair's traffic growth in the second quarter was 30 per cent ahead of the same period last year, compared to the 25-26 per cent growth that Ryanair had expected.
Mr O'Leary hinted, however, that growth may slow down over the next year, particularly if sterling weakens against the euro. He said Ryanair had hedged against rises in fuel prices and that three-quarters of fuel requirements until the second quarter of 2001 had been hedged at 60 per cent below current spot prices.
Repeating that there would be no growth in Ryanair operations out of Dublin, Mr O'Leary said Ryanair was in negotiations with 25 airports throughout Europe and was also in negotiations with five competing airports which want Ryanair to base aircraft and open new routes.
Costs have fallen with an increasing level of bookings through the Internet and direct sales. In August, 83 per cent of all seats were sold directly to the public compared to 40 per cent last year.
