Okay, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Michael O'Leary. I'm the Group CEO of Ryanair. I'm joined this morning by Neil Sorahan, our, the Group CFO. And we're pleased this morning to announce a report. Strong half-year results, where profits after tax have risen to EUR 2.18 billion due to a very strong Easter, record summer traffic. And we think, based on forward bookings into Q3, that we're on track to hit our medium-term target of a EUR 10 per passenger profit. And the good news for shareholders is that we've also, this morning, announced our intention to declare a EUR 400 million ordinary dividend payable in 2024. Highlights of the half year have been: traffic has grown 11% to 105 million passengers.
Average fares, as a result of very strong demand, travel demand across Europe this summer, were up 24%, ancillary revenues up 3%. We opened three new bases and 194 new routes in summer 2023. We've seen the Gamechanger fleet rise to 124 aircraft. The total fleet at the half-year end, it stands at 563 aircraft. Our fuel bill jumped quite significantly. It's up over EUR 600 million to about EUR 2.8 billion, but the higher airfares have helped us to pay off these higher oil prices. Fuel hedging has been extended, and I think we're in a very strong position. We're essentially 85% hedged for the rest of this fiscal year to March 2024, at around $89 a barrel.
The good news this morning, though, is that we've now hedged just over 50% of our FY 2025 fuel requirements at about $79 a barrel, which means we've banked a saving of almost $300 million on the hedging of half of our fuel that we need for next year. Overall, too, during the half year, we've repaid about EUR 1 billion in debt, both the second bond and some of our revolving credit facility. The big, I think, structural news in the half year is the 300 Boeing MAX 10 order. That underpins, I think, controlled and what I hope will be profitable growth to 300 million passengers by FY 2034.
As I've just said, we've announced this morning a EUR 400 million maiden dividend and also a dividend policy for shareholders, going forward. Just to touch on the growth this winter, we'll operate six new bases at bases opening in Athens, in Belfast, Copenhagen, Girona, Lanzarote and Tenerife. We'll also operate about 60 new routes, including our first 17 routes to Albania, which I visited for the first time just two weeks ago. To date, over 90% of our summer 2024 capacity is already on sale. Forward bookings are strong, although at low levels yet, and this includes over 180 new routes in summer 2024. While Boeing are currently suffering delivery delays at Spirit, at this stage, we're working with them to try to expedite those deliveries.
But we're concerned that up to about 10 of the 57 aircraft we're due to contract to receive before the peak summer 2024 may be delayed into the winter of 2024. It's a moving target, and we'll keep track, we'll keep shareholders advised. I think the big trend, though, through next summer, as it has been last year, will continue to be the consolidation story in Europe and the capacity constraint. Eurocontrol have already confirmed that about Europe short haul is operating at about 94% of its pre-COVID levels in summer of 2024, and we don't expect that to improve much next year. With the consolidation continues to play its way out, Lufthansa is engaged in the takeover of ITA.
TAP has been put up for sale by the Portuguese government, and it looks like Air France may take a 20% stake in the refinancing of SAS. We welcome this consolidation. We think the European industry needs to consolidate so that we get rid of these flaky perennial loss-makers like Alitalia, TAP and SAS. I think also a big factor in next summer will be the Pratt & Whitney engine issue.
There's an extensive inspection program that will really affect the A320 fleet, and we believe a number of our competitors are going to face very significant capacity challenges through the summer of 2024, which means capacity, inter-EU capacity will be constrained for longer than we had expected, I think through 2024, 2025, and 2026, particularly given the large backlog of OEM aircraft deliveries. It continues to constrain capacity as well. Capital allocations, just want to touch briefly on it. As the business has recovered from COVID, the board has been committed to firstly restoring the pay cut that was agreed with our people during COVID. We've also now put in place multi-year pay increases with almost all of our pilots and cabin crews across Europe, and we've delivered on that.
Secondly, we were determined to pay down debt as quickly as we could, particularly as interest rates are rising fast. We've halved our overall bond debt over the last two years, and we expect to take that down to zero by 2026. In addition to that, I think we've been focused on capital allocations that were our aircraft orders. I think the 300 aircraft MAX, or the 300 MAX aircraft order, which we announced, which was been approved by shareholders at the September AGM, is critical to that now. It does leave us with a huge funding challenge for the next number of years, but the strong cash flow, the strong return to profitability, we think will enable us to pay for most of those aircraft deliveries without having to return to debt.
I therefore think today it's appropriate and opportune that the board has now decided to return or reward those shareholders who stood by us during COVID. Ryanair shareholders invested EUR 400 million by way of a share placing during the peak of the COVID crisis. That enabled us to go out and borrow, raise another EUR 850 million bond, and it was that cash that enabled us to trade through COVID and emerge out of COVID in a much stronger position than any other airline in Europe. Now that we can see, I think over the medium term, it's appropriate that, and we're pleased to declare a maiden ordinary dividend of EUR 400 million, returning to shareholders the funds they invested in us during COVID. That's about EUR 0.35 a share.
It'll be paid in an interim and final dividend of about EUR 200 million each, payable in February 2024, and after the AGM in September 2024, respectively. The board has also believed now is an opportune time to declare an ordinary dividend policy, and going forward, for all years from FY 2025 onwards, the board is committed to returning about 25% of prior year profit after tax, by way of ordinary dividends to the shareholders, and we want to thank those shareholders for their support during a very difficult COVID period. Turning to the outlook, we continue to target about 183.5 million passengers in FY 2024. I'm not sure whether we'll hit that number. It depends on Boeing meeting some of their delivery commitments between now and the year-end. However, we will certainly get close.
As previously guided, we expect ex-fuel unit cost to increase by about EUR 2 per passenger this year, but that will still mean an ever-widening cost gap between Ryanair and our competitor airlines in Europe. Forward bookings into Q3 are robust, particularly for the late October midterms and into the peak Christmas travel period, and I believe with the benefit of constrained EU capacity this winter, Eurocontrol expects the capacity to recover to only 94% of pre-COVID this winter. The much more significant impact of the Pratt & Whitney engine repairs on competitor fleets. We think we're set fair for a strong growth next year, both in terms of headline traffic numbers, subject to the Boeing deliveries, but also underlying airfares during the peak period of April and the summer period. Q4 is traditionally our weakest quarter.
We have very limited visibility into Q4 this year. But I think on balance, we now believe we're or we now expect that full year profit after tax will finish in a range of between EUR 1.850 billion-EUR 2.05 billion for the 12 months. That assumes modest losses over the second half of the year, the winter period, but this guidance obviously remains very dependent on the absence of any unforeseen adverse events, for example, such as Ukraine and the tragic events currently underway in the Israeli-Palestine conflict between now and the end of March 2024. And with that, Neil, I think we'll hand over to you to take us through the slide presentation.
Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everybody. Ryanair has the lowest fares and the lowest costs of any airline in Europe. We're number one for traffic, and we'll hopefully deliver 183.5 million passengers this year, which is a 9% increase on last year. We're number one for on-time performance and reliability. We rank number one for ESG by Sustainalytics in Europe, and our 300 MAX 10 order will underpin a decade of growth for Ryanair. Our financial strength and our lowest costs make us the long-term winner by a mile in our sector. In relation to coverage and choice, as you can see, 92 bases and 228 airports.
We operated over 3,300 daily flights during the peak of the summer, and we believe that this unique network will enable us, coupled with the MAX 10 aircraft, to grow to 300 million passengers by FY 2034. Our unit cost advantage over everybody else continues to improve. The gap is widening between ourselves and everybody else. We came into COVID with a wide gap. We come out with an even wider gap, and we expect that with the new aircraft deliveries, to improve for years to come. So a significant cost advantage over all of our competitors in Europe. Looking at the first half of FY 2024, it was a strong quarter.
We saw 11% increase in guests or passengers to just over 105 million at a 95% load factor, which is an improvement on last year. Revenue up 30%, just under EUR 8.6 billion, thanks to record bookings over the peak summer, a strong Easter and of course, 24% increase in average fares. Operating costs were up 24%, a lot of that driven by a higher fuel bill. We saw a 29% increase in our fuel bill in the quarter. But the final result was that we delivered a 59% increase, just under EUR 2.2 billion profit after tax in the first half of the year. We have an industry-leading balance sheet, a BBB rating by both Fitch and S&P.
We had very strong liquidity at the back end of the half despite the fact that we had EUR 1.6 billion CapEx in the first half of the year. We paid down significant debt, and you can see the end result is that we saw net debt improve from just over EUR 560 million at the end of March to over EUR 840 million at the end of H1. Just focusing a little bit more on our balance sheet, this will underpin our growth as we move forward. We've got a very manageable and modest debt profile for the next few years. In September 2025, we have our EUR 850 million maturing bond, and then the final bond matures in May 2026.
CapEx this year is the peak of the Gamechanger order book, so we're looking at EUR 2.8 billion CapEx, although there'll be a material step down next year to EUR 1.3 billion, and then it'll be approximately FY 2030 before we get to the peak of the MAX 10 order book, where we'll be looking somewhere close to about EUR 3 billion. The expectation, similar to this year, is that we will fund this from our internal cash resources, and of course, we'll have some NG disposals, which will also help when we get to the MAX 10 CapEx. Our balance sheet, as I said previously, very highly rated, BBB+, but 534 Boeing 737s are fully unencumbered, which gives us huge access and flexibility in what we do.
We continue to have access to the bond market, sale and lease back bank, and every other form of financing. But at the moment, in a rising interest environment, we're paying down our debt out of our own cash resources. This is very helpful, particularly in a market where there's huge capacity constraints, particularly around engine issues with Pratt & Whitney, where our competitors are now paying between 30%-40% just to extend 10- or 11-year-old leases within their fleet. So we've got a huge competitive advantage, thanks to our ability to pay down our debt out of our own cash resources, and we believe that this will be a further reason why the cost gap widens over the coming years. With that, I might ask Michael if you'd take current developments, please.
Thanks, Neil. So we're seeing robust Q3 demand. Traffic and fares are well ahead, but there is some higher fuel on the unhedged fuel. We're making continue to make market share gains across most major EU markets, and we see that continuing. We believe a key story for the next 12-18 months is competitors are going to continue to suffer capacity constraints. Eurocontrol is saying about 94% of Europe's short-haul operating about 94% of pre-COVID this winter. I think one of the important things is we've banked a significant saving by extending 50% of our fuel is already hedged for FY 2025 at about $79 a barrel, well below the $89 at which we were hedged this year. And the Boeing MAX aircraft, we expect 57 of them due pre-peak summer 2024.
The contract says before the end of April. We think, and we're hopeful, that we'll get most, if not all, of them before the end of June, but there is some delivery delay risk. To the extent that we're short 5 or 10 aircraft through the peak summer months next year, it will be inconvenient and regrettable, particularly if there's capacity constraint in Europe and strong pricing, but it won't fundamentally alter the growth in either headline traffic or profitability, we believe. As Neil has said, the 300 MAX order facilitates a decade of low-cost, profitable growth to 300 million passengers, and this has enabled the board to declare or propose a maiden ordinary dividend of EUR 400 million, which repays our shareholders the money they invested into Ryanair very bravely during COVID.
Touch on the Q3 demand. Very strong demand for the October midterm, which is next, well, last week, and for Christmas travel. Fares are up on the prior year Q3 by a mid-teen percentage, but we are paying for some higher... Fuel is up, year-over-year. We've opened 6 new bases, 62 new routes, including 17 to Albania, which started last week with high forward load factors. Our short-haul intra-Europe capacity remains constrained at 94% of pre-COVID. We think summer 2024 EU capacity will also be constrained, which will be a combination of consolidation, OEM delivery delays, and this looming Pratt & Whitney engine, which I think crisis among our competitors.
We already have 90% of our summer 2024 schedule on sale into that market, and we're seeing strong forward bookings and strong pricing already. Here I've set out just where we think the capacity will be constrained. You have the Pratt & Whitney issue. MRO slots are full, and lease rates are soaring. The cost gap widens even further. The consolidation will continue to reduce capacity further. If Lufthansa buys easyJet, they will pivot easyJet to feed the hubs in Frankfurt and Munich. They won't be expanding easyJet's operations to and from Italy. There is a large backlog of OEM deliveries and delays, not just Boeing, Airbus as well, are struggling to deliver on time.
That constrained E.U. capacity means I believe we will see a reasonably strong second half of this year, but much more important, strong growth into summer 2024, both at the headline traffic and in pricing. We've set out here just a summary of our, what are very strong market share gains across all major markets in Europe. And as we take delivery of whether it's 57 aircraft or it's 48-7 aircraft next summer 2024, we will be one of the few airlines in Europe with significant capacity growth at a time when most of the other airlines who are taking deliveries of capacity are allocating those capacity to markets in the Middle East or where they don't have to compete with Ryanair. That's just a summary of the hedge position.
Here we are, as I said, this year, 85, almost 85% hedged at about $89 a barrel. Next year, already we're 52% hedged, but it's about $79 a barrel, and that delivers or renders a saving of already banked a saving of about EUR 300 million on the fuel bill for next year. The MAX 10 order will facilitate that decade of growth. The fleet, we believe, will grow to a minimum of 800 aircraft, and traffic will grow to 300 million passengers. And you can see, next year, whether we get to 200 million or 205 million, I don't think it fundamentally alters. Boeing will resolve these delivery delays, and we will take the aircraft as and when we get them. Touch again on the capital allocation policy.
The board has been very cautious and very conservative. We've a very strong balance sheet. We're now seeing very strong liquidity as we pay down debt, as we hedge. We're seeing very strong liquidity. At the period, we had EUR 4 billion in gross cash as we entered COVID-19. We had a strong investment-grade rating, and we have repaid debt. The board is determined to continue to invest in growth. We're funding pay increases for all of our staff. That's now done. We're funding a very ambitious 737 CapEx program, done and continues to be done. And we're investing heavily in resilience, crew training, building simulators, building hangar training centers, acquiring more spare engines and parts, and building... And we're looking at and now building our own engine shop....
and I think one of the key features of this summer has been dramatic improvements by Ryanair Labs and our customer app, our day-of-travel app, making it easier for customers to interact with us and us to interact with our customers as they travel with us. And all of this leads us to a new era, we think, of shareholder returns. So the board has set what I think is a conservative and cautious dividend policy. We're paying out a EUR 400 million maiden dividend in FY in 2024. That repays, shareholders, for the money that they bravely invested in us during COVID. And the board has gone further by setting out, I think, a reasonably conservative, dividend payout ratio going forward. From FY 2025 onwards, 25% of prior year PAT, pre-exceptions, will be paid out to shareholders by way of ordinary dividends.
That doesn't preclude or exclude future special dividends or share buybacks, but only when we can see cash flows building or we generate spare cash, we promise to continue to return that to our shareholders. We continue to be best-in-class in ESG. As Neil has said, rated number one airline in Europe by Sustainalytics, Triple B rated by MSCI, and B rated by the Carbon Disclosure Project, and we hope to see that B rating rise to an A rating when they re-rate the industry sometime early in 2024. In terms of outlook, full-year traffic, we're still sticking to that target of 183.5 million, up 9%. It is, however, subject to Boeing delivery delays. It might move maybe 500,000 passengers, but fundamentally, I think we'll get to 83 million+.
We're seeing strong, robust demand in Q3 at higher fares, although we do have higher fuel. Competitor capacity constraints, I think, will be the story of this winter, 2023, and also summer 2024, which I think sets a reasonable prospect as we expand into new markets with up to 57 new aircraft. I think you'll see strong traffic growth and I would hope, a third summer of strong fare growth. We'll still have low fares, but you're not going to see any 9.99 seat sales. FY 2024, we expect profit after tax now to be in a range of between EUR 1.85 billion to about EUR 2.05 billion, back to somewhere just above EUR 10 profit after tax per passenger.
We are a very profitable airline, but it's a very modest profit at EUR 10 per passenger, given the resources and the capital that we've invested in this business. So, we hope, we hope to continue to trade at around EUR 10 profit per passenger, in the coming years. The board has declared a conservative dividend policy, that adds to shareholder returns, which have been very significant over the last decade. We continue to manage a very strong balance sheet, Triple B plus rated, and we continue to execute fleet and market share gains. And I am absolutely convinced that our timely MAX 10 order with Boeing will facilitate our growth to at least 300 million passengers by FY, 2034. And with that, we're going to open up to Q&A.
Michael O'Leary, good morning. Let's begin by discussing ESG. What are Ryanair's H1 highlights?
There was a lot going on in the first half of the year, but we did take 26 Gamechangers into the fleet, bringing us up to 124 MAX 200s, a very fuel-efficient and noise-efficient aircraft. We also continue to invest heavily in the retrofit of Scimitar winglets, which again will reduce fuel and noise, and we would hope to have 130 of the aircraft retrofitted by the end of the current maintenance season. Our partnerships on SAF have been expanded, and we're well on track to achieve our 12.5% SAF target by 2030. In fact, we've 9.5% of that already locked away.
More recently, back in September, we delivered a petition to the European Commission, signed by 1.5 million of our passengers, calling for the protection of overflights during ATC strikes. This is something that would eliminate a lot of needless flying and not a lot of needless CO2 being burned, and it's totally within the gift of the EEC to deliver this.
What's Ryanair's job creation plan for the next few years?
It's ambitious. We plan to create about 10,000 jobs for highly paid aviation professionals, pilots, cabin crew, engineers, as we take delivery of 300 MAX aircraft and grow the fleet to about 800 aircraft over the next decade. We're focusing on bringing those pilot cadets and engineering apprentices through in-house training centers, and we have already now announced our fourth pilot training center in Madrid, and our fifth, which will be based in Kraków. Those are both investments of about $100 million in both centers. And the new engineering academy will support the production and training of about 1,000 engineering apprentices annually as we move forward. We've got to continue to invest heavily in new aircraft, but also bring through the next generation of pilots, cabin crew, and engineers.
And we hope to do that in partnership with the unions, where I think we have very good relationship with the unions across Europe, having agreed both pay cuts during COVID, pay restoration, and annualized pay increases with most of our union partners over the last 12 months.
Shifting to operational performance, this summer you operated your largest-ever schedule. What are the key call-outs?
Yeah, well, it was a very busy summer with 3 new bases. We went back into Belfast, and then we took our 2 new bases down in the Canary Islands, in Tenerife and Lanzarote. We also had 190 new routes, so lots of choice for our customers. We delivered record flights, daily flights of over 3,000 per day, and we'd over 600,000 passengers flying with us daily at the peak of the summer. So this helped drive our ever-growing market shares in key markets across Europe.
Will you continue to invest in operational resilience into H2?
I think we will, and then, but we have no choice. You know, already thus far in 2023, we've suffered over 64 days of ATC strikes, 60 of them in France alone. The UK ATC system continues to be mismanaged, badly staffed, and collapsed on the 28th of August, canceling about 2,000 flights and delaying about 5,000 flights. In that marketplace, we will continue to invest heavily in ops resilience. We've this year increased the crew ratios. We've doubled the size of our ops control center in both Dublin and in Warsaw, so that we already today have a capacity for about 800 aircraft.
More importantly, we are investing heavily in passenger communications in our day-of-travel app so that we can communicate delays, disruptions with passengers, and also in those rare cases where we have to cancel or re-accommodate passengers, we can do so effectively and efficiently and quickly.
Looking ahead to next year, Neil, do you think people will continue to travel?
I do. I think there's gonna be very strong demand into next year. In fact, we've over 90% for our summer schedule already on sale, with 190 new routes. I think capacity, as we've already said during the presentation, will remain constrained into next summer and beyond, and so I think we're in a very strong position in relation to that. Wages and employment in Europe continue to be strong. And Ryanair, of course, has the lowest fares, the best choice, and the lowest cost of any airline, which we believe will enable us to grow strongly into the second half of this year but also into the summer of next year.
What's your view on inter-European capacity over the next few years?
As Neil has said, it's going to be heavily constrained. Firstly, there's been structural capacity removals due to COVID-19 within Europe because of airline failures and some very significant fleet cuts, and those cuts will not be restored. Secondly, the EU airlines are continuing to consolidate. We will, I think, in the next- this winter, see the takeover of ITA by Lufthansa, TAP by one of the legacy carriers, and SAS as well. Thirdly, there's a huge backlog of OEM manufacturer delivery delays. Both Airbus and Boeing are running well behind their original delivery plans this year, and that will further constrain certainly EU short-haul capacity growth right out probably to about 2030. And I think the Pratt & Whitney engine issue is going to significantly impact certainly competitor capacity between 2024 and 2026.
This is not going to be a quick fix. It's going to be a very painful and long, drawn-out repair. But into that marketplace next year, we think we'll be taking delivery of between 47-57 new Boeing 737 Gamechanger aircraft, and then for summer 2025, we'll take delivery of either another 30 or 40, depending on how many get delivered next year. So we have controlled capacity growth into a market that's going to be very heavily capacity constrained for the next two summers, and I would hope that we'll see very strong demand next summer as the Asian market continues to recover, and I think transatlantic will be strong again next summer. We see that already, having loaded 90% of the summer 2024 schedule. Forward bookings are strong, and pricing at this early stage remains strong as well.
Shifting to your results, today you reported a H1 PAT of EUR 2.2 billion. What are the key call-outs?
Yeah, it was a strong first half of the year. We saw traffic increase by 11%, so just over 105 million passengers at a stronger load factor of 95%. Fares were up 24%, driven by a particularly strong Easter in Q1, which had relatively light comps due to the invasion of Ukraine the prior year. But we had record demand over the peak summer periods. Ancillaries put in a good performance, up 3% to just under EUR 24 per passenger. On the cost side, we did see a 24% increase. This was due primarily to a 29% increase in our fuel bill to EUR 2.8 billion. But we also invest very heavily in crewing ratios.
We operated with the highest crewing ratios we've ever had, this summer, which was great, for operational resilience. We're also seeing, the pay restoration, which was accelerated last December, and of course, pay increases, coming through in the staff line. But I think the real number when we're talking cost to focus in on is our unit costs ex fuel, which come in at just under EUR 32 per passenger, so a significant advantage and a much wider cost gap between ourselves, and everybody else.
You mentioned fuel. What's your current fuel hedging position?
As you know, we're, we're 85%, effectively 85% hedged out to March 2024, at about an average about $89 a barrel. I think the good news today is we've now hedged 50% of our FY 2025 requirement at a much lower price, about $79 per barrel. That means we've banked savings on our fuel bill, about $300 million on the first half of our fuel needs, for FY 2025.
What about your OpEx currency hedging?
Yeah, well, complementing the jet hedging, which Michael just talked about there, we're approximately 90% hedged for the current year, at 108 on the euro/dollar, and we're over 50% hedged into next year at a better rate of 112, which helps drive the savings on our fuel bill into next year.
Is your carbon hedged?
Yes, for FY 2024, our carbon exposure is 100% hedged at about EUR 81. For FY 2025, we've now extended our hedging to about 40% of our carbon is hedged at about a lower price, about EUR 76.
Moving to your balance sheet, Neil, what are the H1 highlights?
Yeah, an industry-leading balance sheet. We finished with very strong cash balances of EUR 3.6 billion, and that was after EUR 1.6 billion CapEx. We paid down, for example, in August alone, over EUR 1 billion. We had our EUR 750 million bond maturity, and we paid off EUR 260 million of our revolving credit facility. So we now have a BBB-rated balance sheet by both Fitch and S&P, and we've a highly unencumbered fleet, which gives us huge scope and flexibility. So the debt repayments and the strong cash meant that we saw a good improvement in our net cash position from just over EUR 500 million at the end of March to over EUR 840 million at the back end of September.
... What's the CapEx guidance for the next two or three years?
Well, as you know, this year, FY 2024, is our peak CapEx. It's the peak game-changer CapEx, so gross CapEx this year is about EUR 2.8 billion. That falls quite steeply next year in FY 2025 to about EUR 1.3 billion, and then in FY 2026, falls again to just over EUR 1 billion, a lot of which is pre-delivery payments on the sort of early pre-delivery payments on the Boeing MAX 10 order book.
How do you plan on funding this CapEx?
Well, similar to this year, we would expect to use our own internal cash resources. But thanks to the strength of the balance sheet, which I just explained, we're in a very strong position to look at the likes of the bond market, sale and lease-back, JOLCOs, and the bank market. So we can remain very opportunistic in what we do, and ultimately, the lowest cost is gonna determine what we do. But in a current rising interest rate environment, I think we're absolutely right, and it gives us a huge advantage to be paying down debt out of our own cash resources.
What are your capital allocation priorities?
Well, as I said already in the slide presentation, firstly, it was to restore the pay cuts that were agreed with our people and our unions during COVID. Then we've, we've now negotiated multi-year pay increases for almost all of our pilots, cabin crew, and engineers. So that's done. Secondly, it was to pay down the debt aggressively over the last 18 months. That still leaves us two bonds to pay. As Neil said, we have an EUR 850 million bond in September 2025, a EUR 1.2 billion bond in May 2026, and we need to pay those out of internally generated cash flow. That will leave us debt-free at the end of 2026, which I think is a very compelling cost advantage over all of our competitors, who all labor under very significant net debt, have net debt positions on their balance sheet.
We need to continue to invest in growth, the 300 MAX order, and also investing in operational resilience, what we've done this year, increasing the crew ratios, investing in, significantly increasing the ops capacity, both here in Dublin and in Warsaw. We need to continue to maintain a very strong balance sheet. It's the airline industry. There'll be another crisis in 3, 4, or 5 years' time, and the way that Ryanair makes its money over the medium term is we go into crisis with strong balance sheet, and that's where we do our best work. But in the meantime, the focus will be on restarting shareholder returns. We returned over EUR 6.7 billion to shareholders between 2008 and 2020. We stopped in 2020 due to COVID and then the Ukraine invasion after that.
But we now expect to return to dividends and hopefully, at some point in time in the future, share buyback program as well.
Michael just touched on it there, Neil, around a maiden ordinary dividend. Can you give some additional details?
Yeah, I'll put some color on it. Back in the depths of COVID in September 2020, our shareholders, as Michael already said, stepped up to the plate and invested EUR 400 million in Ryanair through a share placing. Thanks to that share placing, we were immediately able to go out and raise an EUR 850 million low-cost bond, and this meant that we come out of COVID with a strong balance sheet and a huge strategic advantage over everybody else. So this morning, the board are pleased to announce our maiden ordinary dividend, a EUR 400 million dividend or approximately EUR 0.35 per share.
This will be paid in an interim dividend of EUR 200 million in February of next year, and then the plan is that the remaining EUR 200 million will be paid after the AGM in September of next year.
What's the board's dividend policy from FY 2025 onwards?
Yeah, the board... I mean, and we've been communicating this for some period of time, but the board has decided that going forward, you know, as long as we're not subject to any material adverse events, the plan is to pay out about 25% of our prior year profit after tax to our shareholders by way of an ordinary dividend. The split of that will be about 50/50, an interim payable sometime in February or March, and a final after the AGMs in September.
Will the board consider other forms of distributions?
Well, the board retains flexibility to engage in other forms of distributions, whether they're share buybacks or special dividends, but this is very much predicated on us being able to deliver on our other capital allocation priorities. In other words, retaining a strong balance sheet and strong, prudent levels of cash to ensure that we're insulated from any future shocks or indeed can participate in any opportunities that come along. It also has to put us, leave us in a position where we can continue to pay down our debt out of cash, and where we can continue to fund the CapEx out of our own resources as well.
But if there is surplus cash over and above that, as Michael has already said, then the boards won't be found wanting in looking towards other forms of distributions.
Touching briefly on your fleet, what's the latest update on Gamechanger deliveries?
Well, as we said earlier, Boeing are suffering delays with Spirit production problems with the fuselage manufacturer in Wichita. We're working very closely with Boeing. We have a weekly call with them to try to minimize those delays and ensure that we get as many of the 57 contracted deliveries before peak summer 2024. At this stage, we think there may be about 10 of those aircraft are at risk. They may not get here in time for July, August, September 2024. They may slip into winter 2024, which would be 2025. So there may be some slight smoothing of traffic growth in FY 2025 and in FY 2026. But I think the key thing to remember here is we have no aircraft deliveries contracted in either calendar 2025 or calendar 2026.
We think that will allow Boeing, certainly allow Ryanair and Boeing, the time to catch up, get ready for the first MAX deliveries in, the spring of 2027, and also, it will, allow us to kind of continue to, develop the balance sheet, pay down debt, and, look after our people and look after our shareholders over that period of time.
... You touched briefly there on the MAX 10 order. What are the key details?
Yeah, well, this is the largest aircraft order we've ever done. It's 300 MAX 10s. 150 of them are firm orders, 150 are options, although we've typically exercised our options in the past. As Michael already said, the first of these is due to deliver in 2027, and that order will then run out to about 2033. The plan is that approximately 50% of the order book will be used to replace older NGs. And I think importantly, the remaining 50% will enable us to grow traffic in a disciplined and sustainable manner to 300 million passengers by FY 2034. Looking at the aircraft themselves, these MAX 10s have 228 seats, which is 21% larger than the NGs, which they'll be replacing.
They're importantly 20% more fuel and carbon efficient and 50% more noise efficient. And so that will drive significant cost savings within the organization, not only on the fuel line, but also in the unit cost ex-fuel line. We'll also be able to increase our revenue opportunities, particularly on the likes of the ancillary revenues with 21% extra seats. So I think these aircraft, which we've bought at, I believe, is a very attractive price, will widen the cost gap between ourselves and our competitors, not only for the next decade, but probably for the next 20 years of Ryanair's growth.
Lastly, what's the group's FY 2024 outlook?
I think on the back of this morning's very strong first half results, I think, you know, we're modestly optimistic for the remainder of FY 2024. We're still targeting 183.5 million passengers. That's up 9% on the prior year, but that's heavily dependent on there not being any further delivery Boeing delivery delays between now and the end of March 2024. Certainly into Q3, we're seeing robust forward bookings. We expect strong traffic. Fares in Q3 look like they'll be up by a mid-teen % over the prior year. Fuel costs will be higher. We have limited Q4 visibility at this point in time, which is normal. Q4 will be impacted by ETS, but the first half of Easter should come into the end of March in Q4.
I think what really drives the second half of the year, we will make a small loss in the second half of the year, but what will really be the driver for that will be competitor capacity constraints, not just in winter 2024, but again in summer 2025. And I think that will be especially prevalent for the large A320 competitors we have across Europe, who have exposure to the Pratt & Whitney engine issue. On balance, at this point in time, we are cautiously expecting full-year profit after tax to fall within a range of about EUR 1.85 billion-EUR 2.05 billion. We're coming. I think there's a reasonable prospect that we're going to go back to making a very modest EUR 10 profit per passenger in the current year.
We'll be hopeful that we can build on that into next summer if there's capacity constraint, and particularly if we can extend our fuel hedges and bank more savings on fuel. Obviously, this guidance this morning is heavily qualified, and it's clearly subject to there being no adverse events this winter. Obviously, we would hold up the war in Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts as very significant potential threats to the business. But thus far, we're managing well. Demand for travel remains strong. Ryanair is expanding all over Europe. We are taking market share from higher-fare competitors across Europe, and I think next summer we're looking at a year where we will be adding between 47 and 57 new aircraft into a market where capacity will be constrained.
We know already from our discussions with airports, there's enormous demand for Ryanair flights, for Ryanair services, from both airports, passengers, and we hope that will continue to enable us to reward our people, and our shareholders, who have stood by us during COVID. Thank you. We will have a full-year roadshow operating for the remainder of this week. We have roadshow teams in Ireland, the UK, all across Europe, and North America. If you'd like a meeting with one of us, please contact Citi, Davy, or Goodbody, and we'd be happy to facilitate an investor meeting with you. Look forward to meeting you all.
Thank you for your support over the last six months, and here's hoping that the winter will be better than we expect this morning, or certainly won't be any worse. Thank you.