THE FORTUNES of Europe’s two ULCCs — Ryanair and Wizz Air — diverged dramatically during the pandemic. Will they converge in the future? Ryanair carried 168.6m passengers in FY2023 (year to March 2023), which was 19m more than in FY2020, the last pre‐pandemic year. Post‐pandemic, it was able to ramp up operations and add capacity without the disruption that affected most other airlines. Ryanair minimised staff redundancies during the pandemic, striking deals with key unions whereby employees were retained in return for temporary pay cuts, and implemented a policy of rotating its flying crew on the greatly reduced services, so keeping their licences current.
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