The CEO of Europe’s biggest airline has said that more people are looking to vacation in the continent since the US strikes on Iran.
“We’ve seen, certainly, there’s a big collapse in bookings to the Middle East, and a big surge in bookings on short-haul airlines within Europe, ” Michael O’Leary, the CEO of Ryanair, said at a press conference on Monday.
In particular, he added, the focus was on the Easter vacation period.
“The Gulf states will suffer damage to their tourism product,” O’Leary said.
Ryanair only operates single-aisle Boeing 737 airplanes, almost solely to and from European cities. It has some destinations in Morocco, and one in Jordan.
Although O’Leary doesn’t expect there to be “any fundamental change or impact” on booking trends into the start of summer.
The typically outspoken airline boss added that he believes the war will be over relatively soon. He doesn’t think Iran can maintain their retaliatory strikes, and that President Donald Trump “has a short attention span, so he would want it to be over reasonably quickly or he’ll get bored.”
Meanwhile, he added, the Irish budget airline can benefit because, like other carriers, it hedges against oil prices — plus more people are turning to short-haul bookings.
Some 300,000 British people and 20,000 Irish citizens are in the Middle East, according to the countries’ governments.
The UK said it has organised a charter flight departing from Muscat, Oman, early on Thursday to help repatriate citizens in the region.
More than 13,000 flights in and out of the region have been canceled since Saturday, affecting more than 1 million passengers, according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics firm.
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