Budget airline Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has admitted that it will no longer be offering insanely cheap flight prices due to the rising cost of fuel.
The era of €10 ticket has officially come to an end, confirmed O’Leary, saying that the average fare would rise from around €40 to around €50 over the next 5 years.
However, he still remained hopeful, saying that people will continue to fly despite the rising cost of living. He stated that there is no doubt that at the lower of the marketplace, the really cheap promotional fares – the €1, €0.99 and €9.99 fares – will essentially die out.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said that people will still continue to fly frequently. ‘But I think people are going to become much more price sensitive and therefore my view of life that people will trade down in their many millions.’
Airfares became cheaper in recent decades, but the number of flights actually taken rose up. Many people have resorted to taking short breaks abroad on top of an annual holiday.
Ryanair, along with airlines like Easyjet and Wizz Air, have competed to offer low-cost no-frills services. This did come with some critique however as commercial flights now account fr around 2.4% of global CO2 emissions.
In regards to this, O’Leary argued that road transport and shipping are much bigger contributors of CO2 overall, saying that the focus on reducing emissions from air travel was misplaced.
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