Ryanair pushes Boeing 737 Max delivery date back to autumn

Profits rose sharply due to a happy Christmas for Europe’s biggest budget airline

Uncertain outlook: Ryanair, like other airlines, does not know when it will be flying the Boeing 737 Max (Simon Calder)

The grounding of the Boeing 737 Max is slowing Ryanair’s growth significantly, the airline has said.

The plane was grounded almost a year ago following two fatal crashes that cost a total of 346 lives.

Until recently, Boeing was confident the Max would be back in passenger service early in 2020. But now the planemaker says it will return in the middle of the year.

Ryanair has the biggest order for the type in Europe – for 210 of a special variant called the Max 200, with an extra eight seats. It was due to start flying them in May 2019, but due to the worldwide grounding it has yet to take delivery of any of the aircraft.

The airline said in a statement: “It is now likely that our first Max aircraft will not deliver until September or October 2020.

“The requirement for Max simulator training will also slow down the delivery of backlogged aircraft and new deliveries.

“But we believe that these ‘gamechanger’ aircraft (with 4 per cent more seats, 16 per cent less fuel burn), when delivered, will transform our cost base and our business for the next decade.

“As a direct result of these delivery delays, we plan to extend our 200 million per annum passenger target by at least one or two years.”

The carrier now expects to hit the 200 million annual passenger figure – representing 550,000 per day – around the end of 2025. It has flown 154 million passengers in the past year.

Ryanair blamed the delivery delays for the closure of some bases in Spain, Germany and Sweden.

However, profits rose sharply in the airline’s third financial quarter, covering October to December 2019.

It turned a €66m (£55m) loss for the same period in 2018 to a €88m (£74m) profit, due largely to high fares at Christmas.

Passenger numbers grew by 6 per cent to an average of 400,000 per day. Ryanair’s load factor – the proportion of seats filled – increased by one per cent to 96 per cent.