Introduction

In this report Ryanair has been analysed in the European airline industry which is considered to be a low cost airline market leader with no frill operations. Ryanair operates a low-fares scheduled passenger airline serving short-haul, point-to-point routes primarily between Ireland and the U.K. In operation since 1985, the Company began to introduce a low cost operating model under a new management team of Michael O’ Leary in the early 1990s.

At the moment Ryanair operates 181 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft; the Company offers approximately 475 scheduled short-haul flights per day serving 800+ routes and 32 bases in the U.K., Ireland and continental Europe. During 2008 the number of employees in Ryanair rises by 21% to 6,369. Offering widely-available low fares, Ryanair carried more than 59 million passengers during the calendar year 2008.

Ryanair has been considered overtaking Easyjet to become Europe’s largest airline in terms of passengers, overtaking British Airway’s UK/Europe traffic to become “Britain’s favourite airline”.

With turnover of €2714m and profits of €481 after tax Ryanair has proven to be the Europe’s largest airline both in terms of revenue and the high volume of passengers to its credit. They have an average flown passenger load factor of around 82% along with average scheduled passenger yield of €54. The market’s has accepted Ryanair’s low fares and dubbed it the “Ryanair Effect” . They have a history of growth in annual passenger traffic on the new routes it has entered since 1991.

According to stastistics released by the International Civil Aviation Organization (the “ICAO”), the number of scheduled airline passengers travelling between Dublin and London have grown from around 1.7 million passengers in 1991 to more than 4.4 million passengers in 2002.