Delays in aircraft deliveries, combined with efforts across Europe to control operating costs, are dampening Ryanair's summer schedule in Greece for the summer of 2025.
Based on its latest planning for the next summer season, the Irish low-cost airline intends to offer more than 3.7 million flights to Greek destinations next year.
Accordingly, in the same summer period last year, the airline, which maintains a significant share in the Greek market (after AEGEAN and SKY Express), planned for over 5.8 million seats in Greece, meaning there are 2.1 million fewer seats next summer.
It is pointed out that the Irish low-cost company's share —indicatively—in "Eleftherios Venizelos" is just over 5%, while the share of AEGEAN reaches 46% and SKY Express is at 12%.
Ryanair's reduction in supply follows its broader strategy in Europe to contain costs and make routes more efficient. As its officials argue, delays in deliveries of new aircraft from Boeing are limiting possibilities for increasing passenger traffic.
The Irish low-cost company decided to move aggressively, especially for the summer of 2024, by offering the largest program in the markets where it operates. In August, it achieved a new historic record, with 20.5 million passengers and over 200 new connections.
For the winter of 2024 and the summer of 2025, the company's strategy is based on capacity reallocation and growth in regions and airports with reduced air charges (as has been done in Sweden, Hungary and various Italian Regions) or give incentives to increase traffic.
Now, for summer 2025, over 90% of the capacity of the summer 2025 schedule is for sale, including 165 new routes across Europe.
In Greece, Ryanair has already announced new summer routes, such Brussels with Volos, Stocholm with Zakynthos, Gothenburg with Corfu and Thessaloniki, but also on domestic routes connecting Lemnos with Athens and Thessaloniki, etc.
The target passenger traffic for 2025 for the largest European low-cost airline remains between 198 and 200 million passengers, with a projected increase of 8% compared to this year.
However, this is only if there are no further delays than expected regarding the schedule of deliveries of new aircraft from Boeing.
This is one of the main reasons why Ryanair revised its passenger traffic targets for 2026 to 210 million passengers (the original forecast was 215 million passengers) in an effort to prevent scheduling and costs from overshooting certain limits, as happened in 2024.
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