Front page headline of today's Financial Times....
"Ryanair chief warns fares will rise for 5 years because flying is ‘too cheap’
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, the pioneer of low-cost travel in Europe, has warned fares will rise for the next five years because flying has become “too cheap” to make profits as industry costs spiral. His warning comes as ticket prices have risen in Europe and the US this summer as passengers return and some airlines cut capacity because of staff shortages.
“It’s got too cheap for what it is. I find it absurd every time that I fly to Stansted, the train journey into central London is more expensive than the air fare,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times. He said he expected a combination of high oil prices and environmental charges to push the average Ryanair fare up from €40 to between €50 to €60 over the medium term.
O’Leary also fired a broadside at the British government and what he called “the disaster” of Brexit that had stopped airlines easily recruiting European
workers, which the industry says has worsened staff shortages this summer. “This is without doubt one of the inevitable consequences of the disaster that
has been Brexit,” he said. “Withdrawing from the single market, just so that they can say ‘We got Brexit done’ was the height of idiocy. But then they are idiots.”