Summary
- Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary said that they’d not take Russian-made aircraft even in the event that they were free.
- O’Leary expects Ryanair’s competitors to ground their Airbus A320neo fleets, creating growth opportunities for Ryanair.
- The Group CEO expressed some underlooked advantages of being the biggest Boeing 737 aircraft operator in Europe.
Michael O’Leary, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ryanair Group, said that he wouldn’t take Russian-made aircraft even in the event that they were free. The Irish executive made his comments during a roundtable interview with CNBC, where he and three hosts discussed the group’s H1 FY2024 results.
Threats of canceling Boeing 737 MAX order
In late October 2023, O’Leary told The Telegraph that Boeing needed to get its “s**t together” or else Ryanair would scrap its aircraft orders for the Boeing 737 MAX. In accordance with the manufacturer’s Orders & Deliveries filings, Ryanair still has 236 unfilled orders for the sort as of September 30, 2023.
The low-cost carrier’s latest financial results announcement also said that Boeing is currently suffering delivery delays as a result of a producing defect that Spirit AeroSystems, its Tier 1 supplier, has had to administer, affecting 737 MAX delivery rates. In mid-October 2023, Boeing announced that it might inject over $100 million into Spirit AeroSystems after the 2 sides signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The funding includes money for
Nevertheless, Ryanair said it was that it might receive 10 fewer aircraft than the 57 contracted 737 MAXs for the upcoming summer season in 2024, with a possible delay until winter 2024. O’Leary told CNBC that the group The chief noted that the corporate wouldn’t be taking any deliveries in July and August, as it might be a really busy period for the low-cost carrier. Still, O’Leary reiterated that
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Committed to the 737 MAX
The Ryanair executive also noted that Ryanair may have further opportunities for growth since a lot of its direct competitors, like easyJet or Wizz Air, may have to cope with Airbus A320neo family aircraft groundings as a result of the Pratt & Whitney PW1100G inspections. RTX, the parent company of Pratt & Whitney, has previously said that the height variety of grounded aircraft would occur in H1 2024. O’Leary said that,
O’Leary also reiterated other advantages of being the biggest European operator of the Boeing 737 family, namely that The chief said that it is far harder to Ryanair’s pilots since they’d need to be retrained to operate Airbus aircraft. Still, jokingly, O’Leary stated that,
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Asked whether Ryanair would take deliveries of Russian-made aircraft, O’Leary responded, Russia is currently developing the Irkut MC-21, a program that has struggled to realize much traction as a result of the sanctions imposed on Russia as a result of its illegal invasion of Ukraine. Notably, the chief previously said that he felt positive about COMAC developing the C919, China’s competition to the A320neo and 737 MAX aircraft families, yet added that the provision of the aircraft to Western airlines wouldn’t be an element until the second half of the 2030s.
O’Leary explaining why the COMAC C919 is sweet for Western airlines