Bomb attacks hit Ryanair bookings
By Michael Harrison
14 July 2005
The number of passengers booking Ryanair flights to London has fallen dramatically since last week's bomb attacks on the capital's Tube and bus system, the no-frills airline disclosed yesterday.
Reservations are estimated to be down by up to a third since the four suicide bombers struck last Thursday. Ryanair said that at this time of year it normally sold about 100,000 flights a day. Since last Thursday, bookings had fallen by around 8,000 a day. The airline said it believed a large amount of this decline was accounted for by passengers deciding not to book flights to London from mainland Europe and elsewhere in the UK.
The three London airports of Stansted, Gatwick and Luton account for about 35 per cent of Ryanair's total traffic with 15-20 per cent of those passengers originating from other airports.
Michael O'Leary, Ryanair's chief executive, said that if bookings followed the same pattern as after the Madrid and Bali bombings, then ticket sales would have returned to normal by the end of the week, provided there were no fresh terrorist attacks.
But in an effort to counter any lasting slowdown, Ryanair has brought forward its annual autumn ticket sale by a month, offering 3 million tickets into and out of London at £1 or €1 plus taxes for August, September and October. The 2 million in-bound and 1 million outbound tickets will account for about a third of Ryanair's seats over the period, although with the airline largely booked up for the next month, passengers will not be able to take advantage of the cut-price fares until the last fortnight in August.
Mr O'Leary said: "It's important we keep Britain flying and, more importantly, keep visitors coming to London. Generally, the best time to visit anywhere is after a terrorist attack because the hotels are discounting like mad and the place is crawling with security. I doubt if London has ever been safer than it is today."
The rival low-cost airline EasyJet, which relies on in-bound passengers to London for a quarter of its traffic, said it had decided to take a "long hard look" at the situation before making any public statement, adding that an announcement on bookings would probably have to wait a few days yet.
BAA, the owner of Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, is not thought to have experienced any significant drop in passenger numbers since last Thursday. But any decline in bookings would not show through in the form of reduced airport traffic for a number of weeks anyway.
Mr O'Leary said that the ticket offer and the decline in bookings so far witnessed had not led Ryanair to alter its guidance to the market for revenues and profits this year. But he then caused confusion by saying he expected average fares to fall by between 0 and 5 per cent this year, when the previous guidance had been that they would remain flat. Ryanair shares ended the day unchanged at €6.55.
Ryanair also announced that it is starting eight new routes into the UK this winter - four to Liverpool, two into London and one each into Newcastle and Glasgow. At the same time, it is planning to cut three or four routes out of its schedule, either because they are underperforming or because Ryanair cannot get satisfactory deals out of the airports involved. Mr O'Leary refused to say which services were under threat but he said that there were seven candidates, one of which was in the UK.
The airline, which expects to carry 35 million passengers in the 12 months to next April, is also due to announce two new bases in the next month, bringing the total to 16.