Originally published on Aerospace Tech Review
Ultra low-cost carrier Ryanair has posted a full year profit of €1.61 billion after tax, becoming the first European airline to carry more than 200 million passengers in a single year.
At Aerospace Tech Week in April, Ryanair’s Chief Operations Officer (COO), Neal McMahon, shared insights into the airline’s strategic aircraft investment and ambitious growth plans. McMahon unpacked Ryanair’s $40 billion investment in Boeing’s new aircraft tech, and detailed the airline’s plans to grow traffic to 300 million over the next decade.
Speaking on the current state of air traffic control (ATC), McMahon emphasised the urgent need to modernise outdated structures that operate in siloes, attributing upcoming struggles on staff shortages:
“ATC is going to be a shambles again this year. I’d love to say it’ll be better, and through our best efforts, trying to be helpful, trying to push people, trying to publicise it – we’ve been unsuccessful to get them to hire more. So, you take a few countries: Germany has less air traffic controllers than last year, they’re the worst in Europe; France hasn’t grown air traffic controllers, Spain hasn’t grown them quickly enough, and the UK has less air traffic controllers. So, we have a problem that there’s just not enough people being brought into the system.”
McMahon also discussed flight shaming which he claimed “does not exist,” alongside the airline’s expansion of its MRO facilities and pilot training initiatives. Watch the full interview below for more.
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Questions asked include:
- At the end of the year, Ryanair invested in Boeing’s new aircraft tech with the 737. How does this fit in with your wider strategy?
- You also recently began work on a new state-of-the- art hangar. How does this enhance your MRO capabilities and position you for future success?
- In summer of 2024, you described ATC services in Europe as “at their worst levels ever” with summer 2025 just around the corner, what is your current assessment of the ATC landscape?
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