Ryanair today admitted that “much work remains to be done” to develop and improve its ‘always getting better’ customer service initiative despite a 32% jump in half-year profits.
The budget carrier achieved a net profit of €795 million for the six months as passenger carryings rose by 4% to 51.3 million.
Average fares were up by 5% and revenues grew by 9% to €3.537 billion.
Load factors rose by 4% points to 89%, due to a stronger Easter period and the success of the carrier’s customer experience improvements.
Ancillary revenue grew by 4% to €741 million in line with traffic growth as airport and baggage fee reductions were offset by the increased uptake of allocated seating.
The airline raised it full year profit guidance by €100 million to between €750 million to €770 million along with projections that it will carry an additional 2.2 million passengers in the second half of its financial year.
Full year traffic is forecast to grow by 9% to 89 million passengers, with average fares for 2015 to rise by 1% to €47.
“However, we caution that this raised guidance remains heavily reliant on the strength of close in bookings for the remainder of Q3, and in particular Q4 where we presently have very little visibility,” the airline said.
“While encouraged by the continuing strength of forward bookings, we would caution that close in bookings for the remainder of this winter will be subject to unforeseen events which always overhang our business, and so extreme caution rather than irrational exuberance should underpin any medium term forecasts.
“As these strong H1 results and raised full year guidance demonstrate, our business model is performing well but much work remains to be done over the next 12 months to continue to develop and improve our ‘always getting better’ programme for the benefit of our customers, our people, and our shareholders”.Forward bookings for December to March continue to run on average 5% ahead of this time last year.
Chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said: “We are pleased to report this significant increase in H1 profits.
“While partially due to the presence of Easter in Q1 and a weak prior year comparable, we have also enjoyed a strong summer thanks to our strategy of raising forward bookings and improving our customer experience which has delivered higher load factors and yields.”
The improved customer service drive has include the introduction of Family Extra and Business Plus services and a revamped website. The airline’s mobile app has been downloaded more than 3 million times in six months.
“The success of our improved website and mobile app has been validated by the significant surge in web visits across all major markets particularly the UK,” Ryanair said.
“This time last year Ryanair was just third in the UK for airline website visits – running behind both British Airways and Easyjet – on the Hitwise website listings.
“In the last six months we have overtaken both of these higher fare competitors to become the UK’s number one airline website, and the gap between us and these higher fare competitors is widening.
“Our newly established Ryanair Labs development team will roll out more innovative services and features on our website and mobile app on a continuous basis into 2015.”