Soaring fuel prices mean Ryanair will no longer offer dirt-cheap flights, Ryanair’s Chief Executive Michael O’Leary said Thursday.
“There’s no doubt that at the lower end of the marketplace, our really cheap promotional fares — the €1 fares, the €0.99 fares, even the €9.99 fares — I think you will not see those fares for the next number of years,” O’Leary said in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today program.
O’Leary said he expected Ryanair’s average fare to rise from around €40 last year to roughly €50 over the next five years.
Although he admitted that the rising costs of fuel are impacting people’s disposable income, O’Leary said he’s confident the airline’s passenger numbers will remain steady, as lower-cost options will still be popular.
“We think people will continue to fly frequently,” he said. “But I think people are going to become much more price sensitive and therefore my view of life is that people will trade down in their many millions.”