EasyJet pounces on Ryanair woes as budget rivalry reignites

Telegraph

25-05-2025

EasyJet is poised to rekindle a long-running battle for dominance in discount travel as it prepares to swap 80 of its smallest jets for bigger and more efficient models.
Kenton Jarvis, the carrier's chief executive, said that retiring Europe's largest fleet of Airbus A319s – including some aircraft which are 20 years old this year – would help easyJet cut costs faster than arch-rival Ryanair.
The A319s have just 156 seats, compared with up to 235 in the newer Airbus planes that are due to replace them.
While Ryanair is also renewing its fleet, the process has been hampered by a production crisis at Boeing. Crucially, even when the Irish airline does receive new aircraft, they will arrive with only 10 more seats than the planes they are replacing.
In a presentation last week, Mr Jarvis highlighted the 'upgauging' of the easyJet fleet to bigger jets as a key driver in his attempt to lift the company's annual pre-tax profits above £1bn.
He said earnings would also be boosted by efforts to cut losses in the quieter winter months and by growth in the package holiday market, which has enjoyed a revival since Covid, via the group's in-house easyJet holidays brand.
Ryanair made a foray into package holidays in 2016 but terminated it after just a few months. Last week, Michael O'Leary, the firm's chief executive, said in an earnings update that a relaunch now would distract from its own fleet expansion plans.
Mr Jarvis said that closing the gap in average seat numbers with Ryanair would hand the initiative to easyJet following decades of its competitor claiming an edge in the vital measure of costs per passenger.
Replacing an A319 with a modern A320 Neo adds 30 seats – a capacity increase of almost one fifth.
'We have 19pc more seats but still only two pilots at the front. You still only have four cabin crew on board, because you need one per 50 seats,' Mr Jarvis said.
'The engineering costs don't go up because there are still two engines on it. The navigation costs don't really move because that's the cost of air traffic control moving a tube of metal through the sky. So much of your cost base has just become 19pc more efficient,' he added.
Factor in efficiencies from the A320's modern engines – the 'Neo' designation stands for 'new engine option' – and fuel burn per customer improves even more dramatically, coming in about a quarter lower.
Mr Jarvis said: 'When you fly the A319 from Manchester to Paris, say, it's very frustrating because it burns more fuel than when you use the A320neo, which has more customers on.'
Upgrading to newer Airbus models could save anywhere between £10 and £16 per seat.
Taking into account the proportion of the overall fleet to be replaced, Mr Jarvis said he expected easyJet to be £3 per seat better off once all 82 A319s had been replaced.
He added: 'To put that into perspective, we don't even make £10 a seat profit right now. So really it's an enormous improvement.'
Mr Jarvis said the chance to radically increase the average size of its planes was 'unique to easyJet' and a legacy of ordering smaller aircraft than Ryanair and other carriers earlier in its history.
EasyJet started out in 1995 as a Boeing operator but switched to Airbus in 2002 with an order for 120 A319s after Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the airline's founder, secured a discount that undercut the US manufacturer by 30pc.
While it was a significant saving and suited to demand at the time, the planes were smaller than the Boeing 737-800s that Ryanair was acquiring.
Mr Jarvis said easyJet 'went a bit ex-growth for a number of years' as Sir Stelios pushed back against further purchases.
EasyJet ultimately switched to the A320 for subsequent orders, but has so far retired barely a third of its A319 fleet. Two thirds of those planes will now be stood down by 2028.
With no smaller jets to replace, Ryanair's ability to increase the size of its aircraft is limited.
The Irish airline is in the process of switching from the 737-800 to the equivalent Max 8, though Mr O'Leary was able to use its clout as Boeing's biggest European customer to secure a higher-density version with 197 seats, around 10 more than standard.
'Ryanair never had the Boeing equivalent of the A319. So when they go to the Max 8 they're not really getting any more seats. They've designed what Michael calls the 'game-changer', but it's not that much different,' Mr Jarvis said.
Deliveries to Ryanair were also delayed by the 20-month grounding of the Max 8 following two fatal crashes and the more recent production slowdown ordered by regulators after a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines jet.
Ryanair has 150 orders for the larger Max 10 variant, Boeing's answer to the A321neo, but that plane may not enter service until 2027 or 2028, up to eight years later, as a result of the safety and production crises.
Mr Jarvis said cost improvements from ditching older models would only be realised if easyJet was able to sell the additional capacity at the same revenue per seat as before.
He said: 'I think we can because we are in a period where there just isn't so much supply in the market as the manufacturers struggle to increase build rates.'
Mr Jarvis said the carrier was on track for a record profit in line with analyst estimates of about £700m in the year through September as summer bookings surged.
Bigger planes will also play to easyJet 's focus on major airports, where new operating slots during the busiest periods are rare and expensive to secure.
He said: 'This is a nice way of increasing capacity without needing to conjure up new slots. You have more passengers coming through the terminals because you have larger aircraft.'
Adding dozens of extra seats per flight will be a lucrative proposition at airports such as Geneva and Milan Linate, where average fares are higher than at the less expensive airports favoured by Ryanair.
EasyJet, which has a fleet of 355 planes and is due to take delivery of 291 through 2034, is also using the additional range of the bigger jets to extend its network beyond Europe, offering more flights to North Africa and as far afield as Cape Verde.
Ryanair said it remained by far Europe's most efficient airline and said the gap has widened in recent years.
The Dublin-based carrier said it had per-passenger costs of €35 (£29) last year, excluding fuel.
A spokesman said that compared with €85 (£71) at easyJet, partly as a result of the fees charged by major airports, and double that again at full-service operators IAG, which owns British Airways and Lufthansa.
Wizz Air, which benefits from lower staff expenses in Eastern Europe, had the second-lowest cost base, according to Ryanair's calculations.