The airline that the late entrepreneur Tony Ryan built appears to be flying high and able to survive any hardship that the fragile industry throws up.
Humble beginnings.
Ryan, the son of a train driver from Limerick Junction, County Tipperary, started out as a dispatch clerk with Ireland’s national airline Aer Lingus. He learned the aircraft leasing business – that is, utilising surplus planes without the expense of buying them – that was to be the bedrock of his airline fortune.
Plane leasing the key.
Ryan built the world’s biggest plane leasing company – Guinness Peat Aviation – before co-founding Ryanair in 1984. It made him a billionaire before his death in 2007.
Nearly 40 years on from the launch, Ryanair appears to be weathering turbulence caused by everything from COVID to air traffic control chaos and the rising cost of living.
The company says it flew a record 18.9 million passengers in August – that is more than the population of the Netherlands.
Record passengers
Ryanair flew 12% more passengers in August, than in the same month last year, Reuters reported.It was its latest all-time traffic record in what is typically the airline’s busiest month.
The number was up from 16.9 million a year earlier and up from 14.9 million in August 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Number of passengers expected to grow.
It also achieved a record in July carrying 18.7 million passengers.
The Irish airline has said it expects traffic in the financial year to March 2024 to grow by 9%, to around 183.5 million passengers.
