Ryanair growth stalls as pilot crisis takes its toll

Ryanair’s traffic growth halved last month as the prospect of a pilot strike and the airline’s cancellation of thousands of flights this autumn finally appeared to take its toll, it emerged on Wednesday.

Traffic increased by just 3% year on year at the Irish airline in December, in what is normally a bumper month when London’s Irish population goes home for Christmas. In November traffic was 6% up on a year earlier.

The budget airline, which began cancelling flights in September because changes in the rota had made it a struggle to find pilots, carried 9.3 million passengers in December, up from 9 million passengers 12 months earlier.

However, the figures revealed a sharp slowdown in passenger growth from a year earlier when flyer numbers grew by 20%.

A planned pilot strike days before Christmas was averted.

Ryanair revealed this week that it had begun making contingency plans for Brexit by applying for a British air operating licence to ensure its domestic UK routes can keep flying after the UK has left the EU. The Irish airline has repeatedly warned that flights could be grounded after next March unless a new framework for aviation is agreed between Britain and the EU.

Hungarian budget airline Wizz Air took a similar move in October. Wizz today saw its traffic grow by 20% in December.

The airline carried 2.2 million passengers during the month and has taken advantage of the collapse of Monarch to expand at Luton.