Ryanair to emerge bigger as Europe consolidates

The next carrier in our airline outlook series is Ryanair, which despite recent self-declared "stuff-ups" on fuel prices, remains very well positioned to benefit from market churn this Winter. Ryanair recently stated its outlook for the financial year ending 31-Mar-09 remains "largely unchanged", although it expects to break-even if oil prices average USD100 per barrel this Northern Winter. This represents an improvement from the previous forecast (in Jul-08) of "break-even to minus EUR60 million", but could be prematurely optimistic, given the big spike in global oil prices in the past week.