Ryanair lifts profits but takes £22m cancellation hit

The Irish firm said costs in its “sales, marketing and other” bracket had leapt 30%, as it dishes out compensation after around 700,000 customers were disrupted by cancelled flights stretching from September to March next year.

The carrier has been attacked for cancelling around 20,000 flights in the autumn due to an error over pilot holiday rosters.

Pre-tax profits climbed to h1.293bn (£1.139bn) for the six months ending in September, up from h1.168bn (£1.029bn) over the period last year.

The jump was driven by a strong Easter period, helping bolster customer numbers by 11% to 72.1 million.

Revenues also rose 7% to h4.425bn (£3.899 billion), as it added 80 new routes and drove down air fares by 5%.

However, moves to boost pilot pay could impact its full year performance by as much as h100m (£88m), the company said.

“These strong H1 results reinforce the robust nature of Ryanair’s low fare, pan-European growth model, even during a period which suffered a material failure in our pilot rostering function in early September,” said CEO Michael O’Leary.

“Prior to this event, we were on track to deliver strong H1 results during which we opened three new bases and 80 new routes.

“We took delivery of 35 new B737s in the first six months of 2017, we stimulated 11% traffic growth with 5% lower airfares, and achieved an industry record load factor of 97% in the peak summer months.”