Ryanair cut its profit forecast for the year to the end of March after some online travel companies suspended ticket sales.
Ryanair said it now expects profits to be up to 1.95 billion euros (about 1.7 billion pounds), down from its November forecast of up to 2.05 billion euros.
Soaring fuel costs for airlines are also hurting profits.
Fuel costs in the October-December period increased by 35% to 1.2 billion euros.
online agent line
Ryanair announced in January that its flights had been abruptly removed from its website, slamming a number of online travel agencies including Booking.com, Kiwi and Kayak.
Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers has been locked in a long-running dispute with the online booking site after filing a lawsuit in the US against Booking.com owner Booking Holdings and its subsidiaries Kayak, Agoda and Priceline. continues.
This followed an Irish High Court ruling that banned screen scraper Flightbox from collecting Ryanair flight information for online travel agencies.
The airline said removing its flights from its website would increase the availability of seats on its flights in the short term, and lowered direct booking prices accordingly.
In the latest result setRyanair expects its annual after-tax profit to the end of March to be between 1.85 billion euros and 1.95 billion euros, lower than its November forecast of 1.85 billion euros to 2.05 billion euros.
The airline said revenue per paying passenger was lower than last year, despite higher passenger numbers and higher fares, and attributed this to the removal of flights from online travel agencies.
But the company’s chief financial officer, Neil Sorahan, told Reuters that the impact of some online agencies being removed from their sites was temporary and was already starting to “disappear.”
The after-tax figure remains above the previous record of 2018’s annual after-tax profit of 1.45 billion euros and follows a sharp rise in profits after the airline’s price hike in November.
Ryanair said passenger numbers rose 11% in the six months to September to a record 105.4 million, despite a 24% rise in average fares.
The airline warned that further delays in the delivery of new, more fuel-efficient Boeing 787 Max 8 aircraft could also impact profits.
It added that full-year results remain largely dependent on “avoiding unforeseen adverse events (such as the Ukraine war and the Israeli-Hamas conflict).”