Boeing has confirmed that it will deliver just 40 of the 57 planned B737-MAX8 200 to Ryanair before the end of June 2024.

As a result, the airline has been forced to reduce 10 aircraft lines of flying for the peak summer months of Jul, Aug and Sept. Ryanair has stressed that this will result in ‘minor’ schedule changes on exiting routes. New routes will be unaffected.

Ryanair has already implemented these schedule cuts at some airports. All affected passengers have already received schedule change notifications offering them alternative flight times or full refunds if they prefer.

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Ryanair regrets these further 10 Boeing delivery delays and expects that these further S24 schedule changes will reduce FY March 2025 traffic to just under 200m passengers compared to an original target of 205m. Ryanair will now work with Boeing to accept aircraft deliveries during the peak months of Jul, Aug and Sept 2024, but given these delivery uncertainties, it will be unable to put these aircraft on sale for peak S24.

Ryanair’s Group CEO Michael O’Leary said: “We are very disappointed at these latest Boeing delivery delays, but we continue to work with Boeing to maximise the number of new B737 aircraft we receive by the end of June, which we can confidently release for sale to customers during the S24 peak. We will now work with Boeing to take delayed aircraft deliveries during Aug and Sept 2024 to help Boeing reduce their delivery backlog”.

O’Leary added that Boeing continues to have Ryanair’s ‘wholehearted support as they work through these temporary challenges’.

“We are confident that their senior management team, led by Dave Calhoun (CEO) and Brian West (CFO), will resolve these production delays and quality control issues in both Wichita and Seattle.

We expect these latest Boeing delivery delays, which regrettably are beyond Ryanair’s control, combined with the grounding of up to 20% of our Airbus competitors’ A320 fleets in Europe, will lead to more constrained capacity and slightly higher air fares for consumers in Europe in Summer 2024. We therefore urge all Ryanair customers to book early in order to secure the lowest available air fares for Summer 2024.”