Ryanair is considering a temporary wage freeze for staff to pay for a sharp rise in its fuel costs which have surged following the US-Israel war with Iran.<\/p>\n
The carrier said it expects fuel prices to remain high “well into 2027” unless there is a “swift resolution” to the conflict.<\/p>\n
Ryanair said its fuel bill is forecast to be \u20ac2bn (\u00a31.6bn) higher in the short-term and said it expects European airfares to increase to help cover the cost.<\/p>\n
But it said that was unlikely to be enough and, among a number of measures, it is looking into “temporary pay freezes”. The BBC has contacted Unite, the union which represents Ryanair employees, for comment.<\/p>\n
The airline said its pre-tax profits fell by 16% to \u20ac2.4bn during the six months to the end of September, largely due to higher fuel costs jumped by 15%. <\/p>\n
Ryanair said that although 80% of its fuel bill had been “hedged” \u2013 in effect, bought in advance at fixed prices \u2013 the cost of the remainder had doubled.<\/p>\n
Aviation fuel prices have surged this year as a result of the war in the Middle East, which has dramatically reduced the supply of refined products coming from the Gulf and increased competition for those produced elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Ryanair’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said last month he expects the firm and other airlines to increase fares by 15% to 20% next year.<\/p>\n
He said at the time: “You’re going to see the biggest increase in airfares, I would say, in history in Europe in the next 12 months.<\/p>\n
“The question is, will that increase in airfares be enough to cover the dramatically higher oil bills? I don’t think it will be.”<\/p>\n
Ryanair said it was weighing up freezing pay as “maturing labour agreements” – multi-year wage deals with unions – come to to an end. <\/p>\n
It also said it would increase its use of artificial intelligence within its back office and support functions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryanair is considering a temporary wage freeze for staff to pay for a sharp rise in its fuel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-821640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}