Ryanair Boeing delivery update: only 40 of 57 B737 deliveries expected for peak s24

Friday, March 1, 2024

Ryanair, Europe’s top airline, announced today that Boeing anticipates delivering only 40 out of the planned 57 B737-MAX8200 aircraft by the end of June 2024. As a result, Ryanair’s S24 schedule, initially based on a minimum of 50 B737 aircraft, will see approximately 10 aircraft lines reduced during the peak summer months of July, August, and September. This adjustment will entail minor schedule changes within Ryanair’s 600 aircraft fleet, primarily impacting existing route frequencies rather than introducing new routes.

To mitigate the effects, Ryanair has already implemented schedule cuts at select high-cost airports, notably Dublin, Milan Malpensa, Warsaw Modlin, and four Portuguese airports experiencing cost hikes exceeding inflation in 2024. Affected passengers have received schedule change notifications offering alternative flight times or full refunds.

Regretfully, Ryanair acknowledges these additional Boeing delivery delays, expecting them to lower FY March 2025 traffic to just under 200 million passengers, compared to the original target of 205 million. While Ryanair aims to work with Boeing to accept deliveries during peak months, uncertainties prevent the sale of these aircraft for peak S24.

Ryanair’s Group CEO Michael O’Leary said: 

“We are very disappointed at these latest Boeing delivery delays, but we continue to work with Boeing to maximise the number of new B737 aircraft we receive by the end of June, which we can confidently release for sale to customers during the S24 peak. We will now work with Boeing to take delayed aircraft deliveries during Aug and Sept 2024 to help Boeing reduce their delivery backlog.

We regret any inconvenience caused to some customers and our airport partners by these enforced S24 schedule changes, which will reduce our full year traffic growth from 184m in FY24 to between 198m to 200m in FY25. We are working with our airport partners to deliver some growth to them, albeit later in Sept and Oct (rather than Jul and Aug). This traffic growth can only be delivered at lower fares during these shoulder months.

Boeing continues to have Ryanair’s wholehearted support as they work through these temporary challenges, and we are confident that their senior management team, led by Dave Calhoun (CEO) and Brian West (CFO), will resolve these production delays and quality control issues in both Wichita and Seattle.

We expect these latest Boeing delivery delays, which regrettably are beyond Ryanair’s control, combined with the grounding of up to 20% of our Airbus competitors’ A320 fleets in Europe, will lead to more constrained capacity and slightly higher air fares for consumers in Europe in Summer 2024. We therefore urge all Ryanair customers to book early in order to secure the lowest available air fares for Summer 2024.”

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