Better than expected Christmas and New Year bookings, at higher fares, led to a 16% increase in Scheduled Revenue to €1.19bn as we carried 36m guests at 9% higher fares.
Ancillary Revenue increased 28% to €0.72bn as more guests choose Priority Boarding and Preferred Seat services.
In Oct., Ryanair Labs launched a new digital platform with improved, personalised, guest offers.
Labs are now focused on improving penetration across key ancillary products over the coming quarters.
Rentalcars.com became our new car hire partner in late 2019 and will help grow car hire penetration and revenue over the next 3 years.
Our fuel bill rose 14% (+€83m) to €0.7bn due to higher prices and 6% traffic growth.
Ex-fuel unit costs rose 1% due to higher staff (increased pilot pay, higher crew ratios as pilot resignations have slowed to almost zero) and maintenance costs (older aircraft longer in the fleet due to the Boeing MAX delivery delays), offset falling EU261 costs due to improved punctuality.
Our fuel is 90% hedged for FY20 at $71bbl and 90% of our FY21 fuel is now hedged at $61bbl, delivering over €100m fuel savings into FY21.
We continue to negotiate attractive growth deals as airports compete to win Ryanair’s very limited traffic growth.
The Group airlines continue to grow.
In Q3 Buzz increased its fleet to 32 B737s and expanded outside Poland with new bases in Prague and Budapest.
Buzz will grow its fleet to 50 B737s for S.20, with 7 aircraft in Polish charter operations and 43 operating scheduled flying for Ryanair.
Lauda continues to underperform with fares much lower than expected, despite strong traffic growth and high load factors.
As announced on 10 Jan., this is a direct result of intense price competition with Lufthansa subsidiaries in both Germany and Austria.
While Lauda will now carry 6.5m guests in FY20, average fares are well below those of other Group airlines.
Lauda’s management is implementing a new cost cutting plan and is improving penetration on ancillary products.
Lauda will grow its fleet from 23 to 38 A320s S.20 with increased capacity in Vienna and a new base in Zadar.
Malta Air continues to grow strongly and has taken over the Group’s French, German, Italian and Maltese bases.
Its fleet will grow to 120 aircraft S.20.
Ryanair DAC saw its fleet reduced to 360 B737s in Q3 as both Buzz and Malta Air took over more flight operations for the Group.
Armenia became the newest destination in Jan.
Regrettably the Boeing MAX delivery delays mean that Ryanair DAC had to close a number of loss-making winter bases leading to some crew redundancies in Spain, Germany and Sweden.
Delivery of the Group’s first Boeing 737-MAX-200 aircraft has been repeatedly delayed from Q2 2019.
"It is now likely that our first MAX aircraft will not deliver until Sept. or Oct. 2020." ■