Ryanair reported a stronger-than-expected performance in the first month of an expanded winter schedule with traffic up 22% to 6.35 million passengers.
The airline revised its full-year traffic guidance up from 89 million to just over 90 million passengers and raised its full-year profit after-tax forecast from its previous range of €750 million-€770 million to €810 million-€830 million.
However, the budget carrier cautioned that the final full-year profit will still be “heavily reliant” on close in bookings and yields in the January to March period.
The November load factor rose by 7 percentage points to 88% year on year despite capacity rising by 13% as new routes were opened to target business travellers.
Ryanair said it “materially exceeded” its first month load factor targets across a significant number of markets where it is offering frequencies in direct competition to longer established, higher fare airlines.
The carrier attributed initial winter performance to its ‘Always Getting Better’ service improvement initiative, a stronger forward booking strategy and fare and unit cost advantage over all other European airlines.
Meanwhile, Aer Lingus carryings in November fell by 3.6% to 702,000 as short haul numbers dropped by more than 9% to 509,000.
Long haul carryings were up by 28% to 104,000 and Aer Lingus Regional numbers grew by 2.2% to 89,000 year-on-year.
Ryanair rival easyJet carried 3.1% more passengers at 4.3 million in November against the same month last year with a load factor up by 0.5 percentage points to 89.5%.
The airline’s annual carryings to the end of November were up by 6.6% to 65.2 million.