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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Business
Simon English

Airports: Can’t even predict things that have already happened

Ryanair has swung to a first-quarter profit despite airport disruption and a hit from the Ukraine war, but warned the full-year outlook is unpredictable (Nick Potts/PA) (Picture: PA Wire)

RYANAIR isn’t to everyone’s taste. You could almost say it isn’t to anyone’s taste – we’d fly differently if we could.

That it is increasingly the best choice is not just down to strained budgets. As rivals squabble, it has at times looked liked being the only airline with actual planes in the air.

It has never been shy of calling it like it sees it, and wins another award on that score today.

“They had one job,” is the abrupt assessment of CFO Neil Sorahan when asked about the total failure of our airports, notably Heathrow, to cope with a surge in demand for air travel now the Covid restrictions are lifted.

It’s a reasonable point, succinctly put.

Did it require genius to sense that there would be a rebound in demand for foreign holidays after about two years cooped up at home?

The bosses of Heathrow and other parts of the air trade would have that it did.

In any case, people book holidays in advance, usually by many months.

So the airlines and airports currently in chaos had taken our holiday money long before they realised they didn’t have enough staff to get us there.

Not only could they not predict the future, they couldn’t predict things that had already happened.

The value of Ryanair is that it sits as a permanent affront to the old-fashioned carriers.

It thinks they are doing it wrong, and frequently demonstrates exactly how.

It is a brilliant business.

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