Ryanair remains interested in acquiring certain assets of broke carrier Air Berlin — including landing slots at major German airports — but has vowed to continue growing strongly in Germany whether or not it is successful, writes Geoff Percival.
The Irish airline has been a vocal critic of how the process surrounding the carve up of Air Berlin has seemingly been weighted to favour German flag carrier Lufthansa but has remained interested despite not having access to Air Berlin’s finances.
Ryanair wants to boost its share of the German market from 8% to around 20% in the medium-term.
Launching its Dublin summer 2018 schedule, yesterday, which features new routes to Munich and Stuttgart, Ryanair’s chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs said growth will still come, be it via acquisition or organically.
“We are interested in some assets, but we’re also interested in the process running the way it should.
“We’re bad at buying other airlines but we’re good at organic growth and that’s what we’ll continue to do in Germany,” he said.
He said Germany — despite being of particular focus for Ryanair — is becoming a ‘banana republic’ of the European aviation industry, with its protected market strategy and lowest penetration of low-cost carriers.
He added that the airline will continue to complain to Germany’s competition authority and the EU over the Air Berlin process “on principle” but is not hopeful of halting any deal.
Mr Jacobs said he didn’t feel there was an anti-Ryanair agenda surrounding the Air Berlin sale but said the German authorities were trying to protect Lufthansa and were viewing Ryanair as the “big disruptor”, being the largest airline in Europe with the healthiest balance sheet.
More noise from Ryanair on Air Berlin is likely today with chief executive Michael O’Leary due in Berlin to speak to reporters.
Regarding the other European airline Ryanair is eyeing, it said it remains in the Alitalia ‘data room’.
Ryanair last month entered a non-binding bid for the Italian carrier — which went into special administration earlier in the summer — and must submit a binding one by early October if it is still interested.
Ryanair’s chief commercial officer David O’Brien said the airline remains hopeful of signing off on one of its much-mooted long haul feeder/connectivity deals — with the likes of Norwegian Air and Aer Lingus — by the end of the year but may end up waiting until 2018 to finally ink a deal.
Mr Jacobs, meanwhile, also called on the Government to do more to entice increased numbers of mainland European visitors to Irish shores, by maintaining the special 9% Vat rate for the hospitality sector in the October budget and doubling tourism-related investment.
New CSO figures yesterday showed a 4.4% rise in foreign tourists visiting Ireland between May and July and a 5.4% rise from Europe, when the UK is excluded.
The number of in-bound British tourists fell by nearly 4%, meanwhile.
Ryanair still sees “a distinct possibility” of significant disruption to flights in and out of the UK in the immediate aftermath of Brexit formally happening in the second quarter of 2019, “unless we see greater urgency” around agreeing a new bilateral aviation agreement or keeping Britain in the Open Skies programme.
This article first appeared in the Irish Examiner.
