| schema:articleBody
| - Ryanair revealed Monday that annual profit sank as the coronavirus outbreak halted travel as well as due to badly-timed bets on jet fuel hedging contracts which turned sour on crashing oil prices. Net profit including exceptional items sank 27 percent to almost 649 million euros ($694 million) in the year to March 31, Ryanair said in a results statement, noting global lockdowns heavily impacted the end of the period. Excluding one-off items, net profit rose 13 percent to 1.0 billion euros at the Ireland-based airline. Passenger traffic grew four percent to 149 million travellers and revenues swelled ten percent to 8.5 billion euros according to Ryanair, which is slashing costs to combat adverse COVID-19 fallout. However, it made a one-off charge of 353 million euros due to the "ineffectiveness" of fuel hedges, which are essentially bets on the price of jet fuel refined from crude oil. This year, the aviation sector has been paralysed by the coronavirus crisis as global lockdowns all but wiped out demand for air travel. Airlines have also been caught out by the 2020 oil crisis because of fuel hedging contracts, which attempt to insulate them from market volatility. A price war among oil producers saw the cost of crude slide at the beginning of this year and then collapse as the coronavirus pandemic shut down swathes of the world economy. Ryanair on Monday warned it faced a "difficult" year, with less than one percent of flights operating since the start of April. Most of the carrier's fleet was grounded from mid-March by EU government flight bans and restrictions. Ryanair forecast it would face a loss in its current first quarter, or three months to June. "Given the uncertainty over the impact and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with no visibility on what customer behaviour and demand will be following a return to service, Ryanair cannot provide 2020/2021 (profit) guidance at this time," it said. "The group expects to record a loss of over 200 million euros in the first quarter, with a smaller loss expected in the second quarter due to a substantial decline in traffic and pricing from COVID-19 groundings." Ryanair last week said it planned to restore 40 percent of flights from July. Since the middle of March, the airline has been operating only 30 flights per day between the Britain, Ireland and the rest of Europe. Ryanair is cutting 3,000 pilot and cabin crew jobs, or 15 percent of staff, mirroring moves by airlines globally to save cash in the face of collapsing demand. Britain -- a significant market for Ryanair -- had revealed last week that international arrivals will soon face a 14-day quarantine to stop new coronavirus infections. Ryanair on Monday added that it expected to carry less than 80 million passengers in the current 2020/2021 financial year, almost 50 percent fewer than originally forecast. But it saw opportunities ahead. "As we look beyond the next year, there will be significant opportunities for Ryanair's low-cost growth model as competitors shrink, fail or are acquired by government-bailed-out carriers." Airlines worldwide are slashing thousands of jobs as a result of the virus grounding planes. This is the case in Britain, with British Airways and Virgin Atlantic quick to wield the axe, despite the UK government paying up to 80 percent of workers' salaries in a bid to safeguard their positions until they are able to return to work. On Monday, transport minister Grant Shapps told parliament that 43,500 airline staff had been furloughed -- and an additional 2,600 airport workers. bur-rfj/bcp/rl
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)