Ryanair unsure of Boeing deliveries

Ryanair is unsure of how increased regulatory supervision of manufacturer Boeing will affect aircraft deliveries due to the Irish airline, according to its chief executive, Michael O’Leary.

The US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) is stepping up supervision at Boeing’s plant in the US after the country’s National Transport Safety Board found that an emergency exit panel that came off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max-9 aircraft was missing a number of bolts.

Mr O’Leary acknowledged on Wednesday that Ryanair was concerned because the incident highlighted poor production quality at Boeing, but said that the airline did not believe it affected its 737 fleet or the Max-8s that the carrier operates. No European airline uses the Max-9.

“But there’s no doubt that the increased supervision by the FAA in Seattle will slow things down. We’re just not sure yet whether it will affect our deliveries between now and the end of June,” he told news agency Reuters.

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Ryanair confirmed last week that Boeing was due to deliver 50 Max-8s by June, seven lower than originally scheduled.

Mr O’Leary was speaking as a European court upheld Ryanair’s challenge against the EU’s approval of €3.4 billion in state subsidies from the Dutch government to rival KLM, part of the Air France-KLM group, to aid it through Covid-19 travel curbs.

The European General Court in Luxembourg on Wednesday annulled the European Commission’s decision to allow the subsidies, saying regulators “erred in defining the beneficiaries of the state aid granted”.

Judges said the commission wrongly excluded from its consideration potential indirect beneficiaries such as the Air France-KLM holding company, and Air France, two companies that also formed part of the overall group.

Ryanair called on the commission to order the Netherlands to recover the cash from the airline and impose remedies to repair the damage done to the competition.

“Today’s judgment confirms that the commission must act as a guardian of the level playing field in air transport and cannot sign off discriminatory state aid issued by national governments,” said a statement.

It added that European countries gifted more than €40 billion in aid to flag carriers during the crisis.

The airline’s lawyers, Oswell & Vahida, noted that this was the second time that the European court had annulled aid from the Netherlands to KLM. The first was in 2021.

Ryanair has filed more than two dozen challenges to the vast amounts of state aid given by governments to local carriers, arguing the measures shouldn’t have been waved through by the EU’s executive because they distorted competition in the industry. – Additional reporting: Bloomberg/Reuters