Tag Archives: 737-8AS

Ryanair announces its 72nd base in the Azores

Ryanair (Dublin) has announced a new base at Ponta Delgada Airport in the Azores. The Azores will be the Irish budget carrier’s 72nd base, and fourth in Portugal. Ryanair released the following statement:

“Ryanair, Europe’s favorite low fares airline, today announced it will open its fourth Portuguese base in the Azores from April 2015 with one based Boeing 737-800 and three new routes to London Stansted, Lisbon and Porto.”

The ultra low-cost carrier is also in discussions with the government of the Azores about possible services to Terceira and additional international flights to the islands.

In other news, ch-aviation is reporting Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary has revealed that the carrier is planning to lease seven aircraft to cover next year’s summer high season.

The airline currently operates 302 Boeing 737-800s on flights covering 180 destinations scattered throughout Europe and North Africa.

This year, the carrier wet leased four Boeing 737-400s, split between AirExplore (Bratislava) and Air Contractors (Dublin), three Boeing 737-800s from flydubai (Dubai), and a maiden Airbus A320-200 from defunct Italian carrier Livingston Compania Aerea (2nd) (Milan), for the duration of the summer

Reported by Oliver Wilcock, Assistant Editor, from Manchester.

Copyright Photo: Paul Bannwarth/AirlinersGallery.com. Boeing 737-8AS EI-EXE (msn 40321) gracefully climbs away from Tenerife Sur.

Ryanair aircraft slide show:

http://airlinersgallery.smugmug.com/Airlines-Europe-3/Airlines-Europe3-QZ/Ryanair

Palau Pacific Airways starts operations with a wet-leased Boeing 737-800

Palau Pacific Airways-PPA (Koror, Palau) is a new island airline in the Republic of Palau. Scheduled passenger operations commenced on November 11 using a wet leased Boeing 737-8AS OM-GEX (msn 29919) of AirExplore painted in the PPA brand. The first route connects Koror with Hong Kong.

Route Map:

Ryanair announces a new base at Bratislava

Ryanair (Dublin) has announced it will open its first Slovakian base (overall the 71st base) at Bratislava in March 2015 with two based aircraft and 16 routes including a new route to Madrid.

Copyright Photo: SM Fitzwilliams Collection/AirlinersGallery.com. Boeing 737-8AS EI-EVK (msn 40298) roars into the sky at the Dublin home base.

Ryanair aircraft slide show:

http://airlinersgallery.smugmug.com/Airlines-Europe-3/Airlines-Europe3-QZ/Ryanair

Destinations from Bratislava:

Ryanair selects Copenhagen as its new Danish base

Ryanair (Dublin) has announced it will open its second Danish base (70 in total) at Copenhagen in March 2015 with up to four based Boeing 737-800 aircraft and starting with three new routes to London, Milan and Warsaw, with an additional 10 more new routes to be announced in the New Year. Ryanair will base its first Boeing 737-800 in Copenhagen from March and 3 more units later in 2015.

Ryanair:

Ryanair launches daily Dublin-Brussels flights, wants to acquire Cyprus Airways

Ryanair (Dublin) on August 21 launched new daily Dublin-Brussels (Zaventem) service (three roundtrips daily) as part of an extended Dublin winter 2014 schedule, with nine new routes and increased flights on 21 existing routes to/from Dublin Airport. This new Brussels Zaventem route complements Ryanair’s existing Dublin-Charleroi (near Brussels) route.

The nine new routes from Dublin are to Basel, Brussels (Zaventem), Bucharest, Cologne, Glasgow, Lisbon, Marrakesh, Nice and Prague.

In other news, Ryanair will soon be in talks with the government of Cyprus about a possible takeover of loss-making Cyprus Airways (Larnaca) according to this report by Reuters. Ryanair believes it can turn around the failing carrier. Nearly 20 companies have submitted non-binding expressions of interest about Cyprus Airways.

Read the full report: CLICK HERE

Copyright Photo: Paul Bannwarth/AirlinersGallery.com. Boeing 737-8AS EI-DHN (msn 33577) touches down at EuroAirport near Basel.

Ryanair:

Mongolian Airlines to extend southwards to Singapore on September 24

Mongolian Airlines (MIAT) (Ulaanbaatar) on September 24 will extended a new route to Singapore via Beijing. The new route will be operated twice-weekly with Boeing 737-800s per Airline Route.

Copyright Photo: Michael B. Ing/AirlinersGallery.com. Former Ryanair Boeing 737-8AS EI-CSG (msn 29922) arrives in Beijing.

Mongolian Aircraft Slide Show: CLICK HERE

Current Route Map:

Ryanair posts a fiscal first quarter net profit of $264.1 million, an increase of 152%

Ryanair (Dublin) has announced a fiscal first quarter (Q1) net profit of €197 million ($264.1 million), an increase of 152% over last year.

The ultra low-fare airline cautioned that this result was distorted by the timing of a very strong Easter in Q1 with no holiday period in the prior year comparable. Traffic grew to 24.3 million as load factors rose by 4% points to 86%. Average fare rose by 9%, boosted by a strong Easter period, while total revenues were up 11% to €1.496 billion. Unit costs fell by 2%, excluding fuel they rose by 1%.

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said:

“Q1 profits were boosted by a strong Easter (but are somewhat distorted by the absence of Easter on the prior year Q1). The earlier launch of our summer schedule and actively raising our forward bookings has delivered a 4% increase in load factor to 86% and enabled us to better manage close-in yields. Ancillary Revenues rose 4% in line with traffic growth, as airport and baggage fee reductions were offset by the rising uptake of allocated seating.“

New Routes and Bases.

Our four new bases at Athens, Brussels, Lisbon and Rome are performing strongly, as customers switch to Ryanair’s lower fares and our industry leading customer service. Our strategy to raise forward bookings continues to drive higher load factors and we expect to release our summer 2015 schedule in mid-September, some 3 months earlier than last year.

This winter we will open four new bases in Cologne, Gdansk, Warsaw and Glasgow (Intl.) as well as substantially increasing new routes and frequencies at Stansted and Dublin as we invest heavily in our network to build schedules on key city pairs to make them more attractive for business customers.

We are overrun with growth offers from primary European airports whose incumbent flag and regional carriers continue to cut capacity and traffic. These new airports along with our existing 69 bases offer Ryanair significant growth opportunities as the first of our 180 new Boeing order delivers this September. These new aircraft, with the benefit of the much weaker US$, will drive significant cost efficiencies over the next 5 years.

Customer Experience Improvement.

Our “Always Getting Better” program has delivered significant improvement to the customer experience. In addition to the initiatives launched last September which included allocated seating, free second carry-on bags, and an easier to use website with a “fare finder” facility, we launched our family product in June. In July we released our industry leading mobile app (including mobile boarding passes) which has been very positively reviewed by independent commentators and our customers and has reached 1m downloads in the 10 days since its release. In September we will launch Ryanair’s business service which will include same day flight changes, bigger bag allowances, premium seat allocation, and fast-track through security at many Ryanair airports. This new service along with our new routes, improved schedules and wider GDS distribution, will make Ryanair’s low fares much more accessible to, and attractive for business customers. We will continue this winter to rapidly develop both our website and mobile platform to deliver more innovative features and services in addition to the lowest fares to our customers.

Fuel

We are 90% hedged for FY15 at approx. $96 p.bl, which will deliver savings of €50m this year at current market rates. This is lower than the €70m previously guided due to increased volumes in H2. We have also hedged 55% of our H1 FY16 fuel needs at approx. $95 p.bl and weaker US$ which will deliver a 2% fall in our unit fuel cost at current market rates.

Bond Issue

The BBB+ rating awarded by S&P and Fitch makes Ryanair the highest rated airline in the world. This rating reflects the strength of our Balance Sheet and our highly cash generative business model and enabled us in June to issue our first €850m unsecured Eurobond at a coupon of 1.875% fixed for 7 years. This attractively priced financing (which was 7 times oversubscribed) will further reduce our aircraft ownership costs over the next 5 years.

Shareholder returns

In FY14 we completed €482m of share buybacks as part of our commitment to return €1 billion to shareholders over a 2 year period. We now plan to return another €520m via a special dividend of 37.50 cents per ordinary share (subject to AGM approval) to be paid in Q4 FY15. This brings the total returns to shareholders since 2008 to over €2.5bn which is more than 4 times the €585m originally raised from shareholders since our 1997 IPO.

Outlook

Based on these Q1 results and our strong forward bookings it is clear that we are on track to deliver a strong H1, during which traffic will grow by 3%, and fares will rise by 6% subject to late booking fares in Aug. and Sept. However we would strongly caution both analysts and investors against any irrational exuberance in what continues to be a difficult economic environment, with some company-specific challenges in H2.

We expect H2 to be characterized by a much softer pricing environment as many competitors are lowering fares, partly in response to Ryanair’s strong forward bookings. Added to this Ryanair will aggressively raise capacity this winter by 8% (7% in Q3 and 10% in Q4) to take advantage of growth discounts and build out business friendly frequencies from Dublin and Stansted in particular. These initiatives will inevitably put downward pressure on fares and (mindful of last winter’s weak pricing environment) we continue to expect H2 yields to fall by between 6% to 8% which will result in full year yields rising by only 2%. Unit costs (ex-fuel) for FY15 will rise by approx. 4%, which is slightly better than the 5% increase we originally guided, due to higher H2 traffic volumes which will be positive for unit costs.

In summary, we now expect full year traffic to grow by 5% to 86m. This increased traffic and higher load factors, combined with a slightly improved performance on unit costs allows us to cautiously raise our full year profit after tax guidance (from the previous range €580m to €620m) to a range of €620m to €650m. However this guidance, which is about a 21% rise over last year’s net profit, is heavily, reliant upon the final outturn for H2 yields over which we currently have zero visibility”.

Copyright Photo: Keith Burton/AirlinersGallery.com. Boeing 737-8AS EI-CSW (msn 29935) in the old small-titled 1994 livery arrives at Stansted Airport near London.

Ryanair:

Ryanair to launch new Manchester winter services

Ryanair (Dubin) has announced it will launch a new Manchester winter route to/from Shannon as part of an extended Manchester winter 2014 schedule, with 24 routes in total, including four other new routes to Barcelona, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria and Lisbon and extra frequencies to Madrid, Riga and Rome.

Copyright Photo: Paul Bannwarth/AirlinersGallery.com. Boeing 737-8AS EI-DPK (msn 33610) arrives for landing at Tenerife Sur.

Ryanair:

Ryanair to launch three new routes to and from Scotland on October 26

Ryanair (Dublin) has announced significant growth for Scotland with three new routes between Edinburgh and London (Stansted), Glasgow and London (Stansted) and Glasgow and Dublin (three times daily), as well as a new base at Glasgow International (Ryanair’s 69th in total).

Ryanair’s existing once daily flight from Glasgow Prestwick to Dublin will now switch to Glasgow International as part of an expanded three times daily business service between Glasgow and Dublin. Despite this switch Ryanair remains committed to its long standing base at Prestwick where the airline has a major maintenance facility and is currently in discussions with Glasgow Prestwick and the Scottish Government, its new owners, to explore growth opportunities to/from Prestwick Airport.

From October 26, 2014, Ryanair will base three Boeing 737-800s at Edinburgh, one at Glasgow (International) and one at Glagow (Prestwick).

Ryanair:

Air Transat’s parent reduces its fiscal second quarter net loss to $7.9 million

Transat A.T. Inc., (parent of Air Transat) (website) (Montreal) posted revenues of $1.1 billion for the quarter ended April 30, 2014, an increase of 1% compared with the same period in 2013.

The Corporation recorded an adjusted operating loss of $4.0 million (all dollar figures are in Canadian dollars), compared with an adjusted operating profit of $2.7 million in 2013, and a net loss of $7.9 million ($0.20 per share on a diluted basis), compared with a net loss of $22.8 million ($0.59 per share on a diluted basis) in 2013. The decline in value of the Canadian dollar alone resulted in an increase in operating expenses of $22 million. Before non-operating items, Transat reported an adjusted net loss3 of $7.6 million in 2014 ($0.19 per share on a diluted basis), compared with an adjusted net loss of $1.4 million ($0.04 per share on a diluted basis) in 2013.

Here is the full report:

“Our results for the quarter and the winter are slightly better than what we anticipated in March,” commented Jean-Marc Eustache, President and Chief Executive Officer, before adding: “It was a peculiar winter. In December, margins were higher year over year and we were heading toward a performance improvement. The sudden drop in value of the Canadian dollar provoked a significant increase in operating expenses that reversed the situation, as it came early in the season, when the market resists increases in selling prices.”

Second-quarter highlights

The Corporation posted revenues of $1.1 billion, an increase of 1% compared with 2013, and an adjusted operating loss1 of $4.0 million, compared with an adjusted operating profit of $2.7 million in 2013. During the quarter, Transat had reduced capacity on its Sun destination routes by 3.5%, which contributed to a 5.3% overall decrease in the number of travellers. Average selling prices were up, and the euro and pound traded higher against the Canadian dollar. The adjusted operating loss is attributable entirely to the decline in value of the Canadian dollar against the U.S. dollar.

Revenues of North American business units, which are generated by sales in Canada and abroad, decreased by $4.0 million (0.4%) compared with the same period in 2013. The decline in revenues stemmed from the Corporation’s decision to reduce supply on its Sun destination routes by 3.5%, and on its transatlantic routes by 2.9%, leading to a decrease of 5.9% in the number of travellers, while average selling prices rose. North American business units recorded an operating loss of $15.7 million, compared with one of $7.3 million in 2013. The increase in operating loss is attributable entirely to the decline in value of the Canadian dollar versus the U.S. dollar, and the accompanying increase in operating expenses. The combined effect of increased selling prices plus cost-control initiatives was not sufficient to offset the effect of those expense increases. The operating loss for the quarter includes a $2.2-million restructuring charge, compared with $3.9 million in 2013.

Revenues of European business units, which are generated by sales in Europe and in Canada, increased by $15.8 million (9.7%) over 2013, owing to the strength of the euro and pound against the Canadian dollar. Measured in local currencies, the revenues of the France business unit increased, while those of the U.K. unit decreased following the Corporation’s decision to reduce capacity. European activities resulted in an operating loss of $1.4 million, compared with $2.8 million in 2013.

First six-month period highlights

For the first six months, the Corporation posted revenues of $2.0 billion in 2014, compared with $1.9 billion in 2013, and an adjusted operating loss1 of $27.8 million, compared with $18.3 million in 2013. During the six-month period, the Corporation reduced capacity on certain markets, resulting in a 3.6% overall decrease in the number of travellers. Capacity on Sun destination routes, meanwhile, was similar to that in 2013. Average selling prices were up, and the euro and pound traded higher against the Canadian dollar. The adjusted operating loss is attributable entirely to the decline in value of the Canadian dollar versus the U.S. dollar.

Revenues of North American business units increased by $27.5 million (1.7%) compared with the same period in 2013. For the six-month period, capacity on Sun destination routes was similar to that of 2013, while transatlantic market capacity was reduced by 6.2%. North American business units recorded an adjusted operating loss1 of $40.7 million, compared with $23.6 million in 2013. The operating loss is attributable entirely to the Corporation’s increased costs following the depreciation of the Canadian dollar against its U.S. counterpart. The operating loss for the six-month period includes a $2.2-million restructuring charge, compared with $3.9 million in 2013.

Revenues of the European business units increased by $25.8 million (9.3%) from 2013, owing to the strength of the euro and pound against the Canadian dollar. Measured in local currencies, these business units’ revenues declined slightly, following the decision to reduce capacity. European activities resulted in an operating loss of $9.9 million, compared with one of $16.5 million for the first six months of 2013.

Financial position

As at April 30, 2014, the Corporation’s free cash totalled $404.6 million, compared with $336.1 million at the same date in 2013. The working capital ratio was 1.04, against 0.98, and deposits from customers for future travel amounted to $540.3 million, compared with $514.7 million a year earlier. Off-balance-sheet agreements stood at $648.6 million as at April 30, 2014, compared with $655.8 million as at October 31, 2013,4 the decrease being attributable to payments made during the period, offset by the increase resulting from the depreciation of the Canadian dollar against the U.S. dollar.

Outlook

The transatlantic market outbound from Canada and Europe accounts for a very significant portion of Transat’s business in the summer. For the period May to October 2014, Transat’s capacity on that market is lower by 1% than that for summer 2013. To date, 65% of that capacity has been sold. Load factors are 2.4% lower and selling prices of bookings taken are approximately 4.3% higher, compared with the same date in 2013. If the Canadian dollar remains at its current value against the U.S. dollar, the euro and the pound, this will result in an increase in operating expenses of 4.4%.

On the Sun destinations market outbound from Canada, Transat’s capacity is higher by 9% than that for the previous year. To date, 49% of that capacity has been sold, load factors are 1% lower, and selling prices are higher.

In France, compared with last year at the same date, medium-haul bookings are ahead by 24%, while long-haul bookings are at a similar level. Variations in the product mix have resulted in a lower average selling price, with no negative impact on the average margin.

To the extent the aforementioned trends hold, the Corporation expects to record satisfying results in the second half, though lower than the record results posted last year.

Cost-reduction and margin-improvement initiatives

The Corporation continues implementing its initiatives to reduce operating costs, improve margins, and make changes to its systems and processes. In April 2013, Transat announced its decision to internalize narrow-body medium-haul aircraft (Boeing 737-800s) for travel outbound from Canada, starting in May 2014. These measures had, as expected, a favorable impact of $20 million on the margin in 2012 and one of $15 million in 2013. The Corporation expects another $20 million in 2014, as well as in 2015, when internalization of the narrow-body fleet will produce its full benefits.

Copyright Photo: TMK Photography/AirlinersGallery.com. In April 2013, Transat announced its decision to internalize narrow-body medium-haul aircraft (Boeing 737-800s) for travel outbound from Canada, starting in May 2014. Formerly operated by Ryanair as EI-CSH, CanJet Airlines’ Boeing 737-8AS C-FTCZ (msn 29923) is pictured operating as Air Transat in their new 2011 colors.

Air Transat: