Ryanair announced it will have to revise down its passenger traffic estimates for next year due to expected delays in Boeing aircraft deliveries, the low-cost airline group’s CEO Michael O’Leary said in an interview with Reuters.
The decision comes amid the ongoing strike at Boeing, which has raised concerns about a possible worsening of delays at the manufacturer. Union machinists from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), Boeing’s largest union, have been on strike since the 14th of September, as reported by The Independent.
Boeing has already faced delivery problems for much of this year due to a broader crisis affecting its safety reputation. According to the Financial Times, Ryanair relies on Boeing 737 deliveries to meet targets, including a passenger increase from 200 million to 300 million by 2034.
“We were supposed to receive 20 aircraft before the end of December,” said O’Leary. “They will probably arrive in January or February. We’ll have them in time for next summer. The big problem for Ryanair is that it should take delivery of 30 aircraft between March, April, May and June next year.”
The comments from the head of Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost airline, highlight one of the strongest statements yet on capacity constraints in the industry, at a time when Boeing and Airbus are struggling to meet delivery targets due to supply chain challenges. The Irish airline is Boeing’s largest customer in Europe, and it expects to receive 30 Boeing 737 aircraft between March and June 2025 to fulfil its growth plans. “Clearly we will have to reduce our traffic growth for next year, because I don’t think we are going to get those 30 aircraft,” said O’Leary.
O’Leary noted that, in his 30 years in the industry, he had never seen capacity constraints of the current magnitude. He mentioned that he was having weekly conversations with Stephanie Pope, Boeing’s chief operating officer, about delivery delays, and planned to meet with Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg in the coming weeks.
He praised Boeing’s handling of its labor dispute. “I think the announcement on job cuts is a sensible move to get the unions into a space where they can come to an agreement,” he said.
Boeing delays in 2023
In October of last year, Ryanair announced that it would have to hack its own winter schedule, deleting flights from Belgian, German, Dublin, East Midlands, Portuguese and Italian airports because Boeing had missed delivery targets for new aircraft.
Ryanair was expecting 27 new aircraft in 2023’s last quarter, but announced last week that production delays mean it will receive just two-thirds of the delivery, from a month late, between October and December instead. “We think there may be some delays into next summer, but on a small number of aircraft,” Eddie Wilson, the head of Ryanair DAC, the largest airline in the group said.
One of Boeing’s most important customers, with a multibillion dollar order of 300 aircraft placed earlier this year, the Irish carrier has complained repeatedly about delivery delays that affected summer 2023. It was forced to revise its full-year passenger forecast down by 1.5 million to 183.5 million in July, blaming both air traffic strikes and Boeing for not meeting delivery targets.
In September of 2023, Boeing revealed a parts problem to do with misaligned fastener holes on the aft pressure bulkhead of its best-selling 737 MAX. The issue means “75% of the 220 737s in Boeing’s inventory will need rework” Reuters has reported. Boeing also had problems with tail brackets, with both production flaws originating at the Spirit Fuselage facility in Wichita, Kansas.
Spirit Aerosystems appears to be proving a thorn in Boeing’s side, with Spirit CEO Tom Gentile complaining that its contracts with Boeing are “not sustainable” and calling on the manufacturer to absorb some of the financial pain of rising inflation and parts costs. Spirit share were down by 7.3% after the complaint.
