Upbeat Ryanair

Irish no-frills carrier Ryanair said Monday it expected its profit for the year ending March to come in at between 840 million euros ($949 million) and 850 million euros.

It was the third time within a few months that the airline had upped its full-year earnings outlook, citing reduced operating costs and rising passenger numbers.

Ryanair hastened to add, though, that expectations for 2016 were rater limited, considering continuously shrinking ticket prices.

The low-budget carrier booked 49 million euros in net profit for the third quarter, bouncing back from a 35-million-euros loss in the same period a year earlier. Revenue rose by 17 percent to total 1.13 billion euros.

Feeding passengers

In the not-too-distant future, Ryanair hopes to profit further from its current expansion into larger airports with a view to winning market share from legacy carriers such as British Airways, Air France-KLM and Lufthansa.

The Irish airline had said those carriers would use low-cost airlines more to feed people onto their long-haul routes.

"If you go forward in Europe in the next five or 10 years, I think low-cost carriers, mostly ourselves and easyJet, will do a lot more feeding of major airlines," Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary said in a statement. He said the days were numbered for how much longer national flag carriers could operate intra-European flights because it was too expensive for them to compete on those point-to-point routes.

hg/pad (dpa, Reuters)