Ryanair will close 7 routes from Hahn at the end of March

Alicante
Faro
Jerez
Lisbon
London/STN
Pisa
Tangier

One new route from Shannon to Frankfurt

1 flight per week
Opens May 2019

https://www.independent.ie/life/trav...-37713155.html

Not a great surprise.

The logic behind the Holidays branch was reasonable, Love them or loathe them, they already have the scale and the cost base to support this. This problem with it was that there was no real incentive to book through them than with another package holiday operator.
They'd compete against other agents, who could easily mix and match the cheapest flights when FR were a bit expensive.
They also compete with the proper Package holiday operators like TUI, Jet2 and Thomas Cook, who offer exclusive services and reps in resort to help out. Some people will gladly pay a bit more for that certainty.
All being said, i'm not surprised it's gone, you have to spend money to make money and we all know FR like to hoard as much as possible

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46916389

Profit forecast cut. No great surprise as others are in same boat as well.

Why is Ryanair Sun listed as operating a 330 to MPN arriving from Espargos at 08.00 today ?

The Royal Air Force used to (still does ?) use IATA airline code RR. I believe Ryanair Sun may also use RR as well

For flights to the Falkland Islands, you can probably guess which one it is... :-)

4 new routes

Kyiv - Hahn
Kyiv - Karlsruhe Baden
Kyiv - Nuremberg
Kyiv- Weeze

All Begins Oct 2019

Laudamotion is now a 100% owned subsidiary of Ryanair Holdings PLC stating that Ryanair purchased the remaining quarter at the end of December.

Poitiers - Manchester

Begins 05 June 2019 till 28/08

2pw

Report on CH Aviation about MOL saying Ryanair would consider buying up airlines with between 10 and 50 aircraft, and the company becoming a holding group

Obvious questions:
1 - why ?
2 - who would be likely companies of interest ?

Why because gives you access to certain markets that you currently not serving and allows someone else to build it up to a certain level before buying. Also a name may mean more in a certain market than Ryanair i.e. Lauda.

Also which is frequently overlooked is that enables you to train management team, give people responsibility for a small airline and see have they the capability to doing something bigger or not as the case may be.

Additionally you can trial things in different markets to see what people like and don't like be it baggage charges, seating plans etc etc

But the commentators largely blame increased fuel costs and higher wages, both up by over 30%. Revenue per seat has actually risen, but by not nearly enough to cover. It seems to me that FR no longer have a lower cost base than their competitors.

I see Bonderman is going in 2020, yippee well he is 76 years old.

Why would they buy up somebody with the same destinations, instead of just directly competing them into virtual oblivion.
More likely Ryanair Holding is MOL's take on IAG in a way that Ryanair can continue to be his powerbase but he himself can concentrate on new ventures. Since I doubt he'll be content as a regal overseer doing aircraft deals I could see him follow one of his long held ambition to do a proper low-cost take on the transatlantic. Ryanair shareolders said no to do it under Ryanair proper, but as a separate entity under a holding company it would be a different proposal.
A good start could have been to shop that part out of Norwegian in a way that it wouldn't create a capital base for Norwegian to compete better in the European market. Norwegain could do well to retrench/concentrate its longhaul on Scandinavia to Asia (with a bit of Japanese pension fund lease-investments) and Europe to South America.

Bearing in mind the issues with airlines everywhere I think this is part of the issue. Making €1 Billion is year is not to be sneezed at.

Fares dropping 6% is roughly €2 a head, x 33 Million Pax it wipes out loss. Balance is between getting bums on seats and empty aircraft and they are doing the bums on seats bit.