Hello, and welcome to the Ryanair Q1 FY 2022 results conference call. Throughout the call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. During the Q&A, in the interest of time and fairness, please limit yourselves to a maximum of two questions per person. Just to remind you, this conference call is being recorded. Today, I am pleased to present Michael O'Leary, Ryanair Group CEO. Please begin your meeting.
Okay. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Q1 results conference call. We have the whole team assembled at various locations on call today. We posted this morning the usual press release. Neil and myself have done a Q&A on the results and the investor slide presentation as opposed to spare you all that detail. Rather than going through the press release, I'll take that as read and give you a couple of themes. I think the key one is. There's more three key themes in this morning's message. One is traffic recovery, two is the very strong performance on cost containment and how that will play out over the next two or three years.
I think three is the extraordinary growth opportunity that's unfolding in front of us as we take delivery of over 200 MAX aircraft over the next four years, at a time when we will see meaningful and sustained capacity cuts across Europe. On theme one, traffic recovery. Q1 traffic was 8.1 million. A dramatically uncharted recovery with a net of 1 million passengers in April, almost 2 million in May, but 5 million in June. That recovery has continued strongly into Q2. In July, in fact, we will just about, we just exceed 9 million passengers. I know last week we said almost. We just get over 9 million passengers.
At the moment, we're on track to just get over 10 million passengers, we'd be hopeful that reasonably will, by September, that we get to about 28 million, maybe 29 million in that second quarter. Not alone that we have 8 million in Q1, but about 28 million, 29 million in Q2. All of this is obviously heavily qualified on there being no adverse COVID variant developments or return to lockdowns. We think we need to be confident that's the case. We can't eliminate political mismanagement, particularly in the U.K. or even Ireland, which has been astonishingly poor at managing the recovery. In general terms, we think we're heading for a very strong traffic recovery through the second quarter, and there's a reasonable prospect that will be maintained into Q3 and Q4.
We're seeing a much stronger recovery, I think, in Ryanair than any of the other LCCs. If you take those monthly figures in Q1, we carried five times the April traffic in the month of June. You've seen from the IATA and Wizz Air figures, they carried about three times their April traffic. Our load factor is also industry-leading at mid-70%. In Q2, we expect to operate or offer more than 80%+ of our pre-COVID capacity. With load factors in the mid to high 70s%, we expect to deliver about 70%+ of our pre-COVID traffic. As I said, if the vaccine rollout continues and the managed COVID reopening continues, particularly the schools all go back as normal in September, we see every reason to move the guidance as we have this morning, up from previously the lower end of 80 million - 120 million.
Today, I think we're in a much narrower range of between 90 million-100 million. I think it with no disruption, we're at the upper end of that range rather than the lower end of that range as we stand here this morning. Into that development, we're continuing to deliver very impressive cost performance. I think we have, together with our union partners and our employees over the last 18 months, negotiated very reasonable and modest pay cuts, which ranges from 5%-10% on cabin crew, 10%-20% on pilots. That was in return for keeping them all current and avoiding mass redundancies and layoffs. I think that's one of the key reasons that we've been able to deliver such a strong and rapid traffic recovery. We've kept the crews current.
We have the right people in the right places. We've been able to unwind a very quick and rapid development of our reopening. Airport and handling costs have been renegotiated. We've taken, as of the end of July, 11 of our first 12 of the MAX aircraft have been delivered. I would like to say that the performance of the MAX in the first month of operation thus far has been spectacular. Admittedly, with slightly lower than normal load factors. The fuel performance has been well in excess of the 16% saving promised by Boeing. There's been a uniquely, I'd say, an overwhelmingly positive response both from our crews, the pilots and cabin crew love operating the aircraft, and from our passengers.
We've been operating a system for the last month where any passenger getting on a MAX who wants to offload could do so without any quibble and travel on the next available flight. Not one passenger has sought to offload off that aircraft yet, and the feedback from passengers traveling on the aircraft is they've been particularly quiet and a very nice experience. As we had, I think, long predicted that once we start flying the aircraft, passengers will love them. These aircraft enable us tapping to enormous growth opportunities. I don't think, certainly in my 30 years in this industry, post-9/11, post-Gulf War, there has never been a growth opportunity in front of Ryanair such as we have at the moment. Already this year, we've announced 10 new bases. Multiple bases this summer up in Scandinavia, where both SAS and Norwegian are in chaos.
We've opened bases in Billund, in Riga, in the Baltics, in Stockholm, Arlanda, two bases in Croatia that are in Zagreb. We've extended and enhanced low-cost deals at Stansted, Bergamo, Brussels, Charleroi, that go out to the end of this decade. We've doubled our capacity in Rome, Fiumicino as Alitalia reduces its fleet. We've also announced new routes in Helsinki, new bases this autumn in Turin, in Italy and Agadir in Morocco. This is just, we've barely scratched the surface so far. There are extraordinary discussions and negotiations going on between our new route team and both existing airport partners of ours and also new airports across the entire piece of Europe and the neighboring states who are joining the European open skies. To put it in context, the growth opportunity that fate confronts us, we over the next four years will take delivery of 210 MAX aircraft.
It will take the fleet to north of 600 units. Over that same four-year period, Wizz, who talk a lot about growth, will take delivery of 80 aircraft. Their total fleet will rise to about 230 aircraft. We'll take more new aircraft delivery for the next four years, the equivalent as their total fleet. In the case of EasyJet, there seems to be zero growth. In fact, their fleet has shrunk in the current year, and we see them, factoring into mind that they take what they have, they certainly won't be a competitor for us on new route development or growth. Where we think the real opportunity though will be is we've seen all the failures, Thomas Cook, Flybe, Germanwings, Level.
There are much more meaningful short-haul capacity reductions in countries like in Portugal, where TAP have already announced a short-haul fleet reduction of 20%. We think that will finish up closer to 30%, Alitalia's reducing its fleet by 25%, and again, we think that will be more. There are enormous opportunities. We are seeing slots becoming available to us at airports where previously we couldn't get them. I think if you have the aircraft delivery for the next three or four years, we are going to secure space at airports. Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure space at airports and expand our footprint from as an airline today, which has 70% of our departures at primary airports and 30% at secondary airports. We see that rising to about 80% of departures at primary airports and 20% at secondary airports over the next four years.
The one other issue we should touch on briefly is the EU announcement of Fit for 55. I would caution investors again, it will have no impact on our cost base until FY 2024 onwards, so it will have no impact for at least the next two years. It is I think a badly designed package which introduces not just double taxation on short-haul European flights, but triple taxation. Short-haul passengers, namely EU consumers, will now be faced paying not just ETS payments, but also an aviation fuel tax, in addition to APD in many EU countries like Germany, Austria and others. It is bizarre and inexplicable that these taxes are only being levied on European short-haul flights while designed by our friends in the Holland, Germany and France. The long-haul operators in those countries get a free pass on these aviation taxes.
We believe, however, that this program will be materially renegotiated, and I think softened over the next two years. We see a significant concerns being raised among EU peripheral states in Eastern Europe, Cyprus, Malta, Ireland, among others. Particularly also in the tourism destinations, Spain, the Canaries, Portugal, the Azores, the Greece, and Greek islands. Beginning to realize that what we have here is aviation tax proposals being designed by the Dutch, Germans and French, largely aimed at aviation, where in most of those countries people have the alternatives of train or motorway alternatives. In Ireland, in Portugal, in Greece, certainly in Malta and Cyprus, we don't have an alternative. We can't simply transfer away from flying because there's no other way on and off these islands.
We think there will be a meaningful realization, particularly among the tourism industry or the tourism nations and the peripheral nations, that long-haul is going to have to bear its fair share. The Dutch and the Germans and the French can't lecture the rest of Europe about more environmental flying while they give their long-haul operators a free pass. For the moment, I think it is in the medium term, and we would expect there to be significant pushback from some of the more of the tourism and more peripheral states of Europe against these triple taxation proposals, and we very much support that. I have nothing else I want to add in terms of the opening remarks, but with that, I'll hand over to the moderator and we'll open it up for Q&A, please.
Our first question comes from the line of Duane Pfennigwerth of Evercore ISI. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Duane, hi.
Good morning, thanks. Just wondering, as you rebuild your network and kind of get back to some normalized capacity levels, what capacity level do you think you could get back to your fiscal 2020 EUR 31 per passenger? Do you have to get back to 100% of what you used to fly, or could you hit that level sooner?
Sorry, Duane, I'm not sure you're asking a question about euros, is it?
Sorry, your non-fuel cost per passenger of EUR 31 back in FY 2020. What percent of FY 2020 flying would you need to do to get back to that level?
I think if there is no adverse COVID development, and we exit the pandemic this autumn, I would be confident that into FY 2023, that is next year, effectively summer 2022, we will be carrying more passengers than we did pre-COVID in FY 2019, which was 147 million and change. Our unit cost per passenger will be significantly lower than they were in FY 2019 with one exception, that is, there is a kind of an uncontrolled escalation in ATC and ANSP charges, where most of these government monopolies around Europe are now talking about recovering last year's loss of income and advancing, I think, ATC price rises next year of between 30% and 40% on a per passenger basis. It's not a huge part of our overall cost base, but it is material.
Other than that, I think you'll see continued meaningful cost reductions across all of the other lines, driven hugely by the fact that we'll be operating more than 60 Boeing MAX aircraft next summer of 2022.
Yeah. If I can just add to that.
Yes.
I would say, Duane, you can start to see something with a three in it from the next quarter, although it will be closer to the mid 30s. As Michael said, as we get into the summer of next year, we start to see a critical mass on the MAX. When those factors are up, we start to be back to EUR 31 and then hopefully improve on that.
That's great. Then just for my follow-up on competitive capacity. I mean, you touched on it.
Yeah.
I wondered if you could put some numbers on it. As you assess the restructuring of European short haul that's already occurred and that's continuing to occur, how much capacity would you say is gone versus pre-pandemic? As you rebuild your own network, is there any numbers you could put on competitive capacity on your routes looking forward kind of Q2, Q3? Thanks for taking the questions.
Thanks, Duane. It's almost impossible at the moment to predict the competitor capacity because a lot of the You have operators like Lufthansa, IAG, Air France-KLM, that are sitting on aircraft that they're not using. Alitalia and TAP have already announced meaningful structural reductions in the fleet of between 20% and 30%, and then you've seen the bankruptcy of other carriers. I think that into 2022 and into 2023, you're looking at a, excluding our growth, a meaningful, I would say 20% reduction in short-haul capacity across Europe. It might be slightly softened into FY 2022 because I think some long-haul aircraft will reappear on short-haul European routes because long-haul will take some longer to recover. There is a meaningful shortage of capacity out across Europe short haul for the next, I think two or three summers.
If you look at the order profile of most of the other airlines, they have almost no short-haul aircraft on order. I think you're looking at a 20% reduction in short-haul capacity into summer 2022 and into summer 2023. Eddie, I don't know whether you want to add anything to that. You'd be closer to that perhaps.
Yeah, you can see it's like some of it has been, I suppose, muddied by the pace of recovery with your competitors as to where they're actually going to put that this winter. I wouldn't disagree that the figure of 20% is probably the more likely reduction, and certainly the one that we've been looking at. We can see it as well in some of our market shares as we grow particularly into August because of the slow pace of recovery of our competitors. 20%, I wouldn't disagree.
Thank you.
Thanks, Duane. Next question please.
Next on the line is Daniel Roeska of Bernstein. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Morning, gentlemen. I'll follow Duane o n the capacity question. Hi. Slightly differently. Where are you seeing those planes leaving the market? Do you think there'll be a difference between smaller markets around TAP and Alitalia and the larger markets with the wider groups? On a sector level, there still are a lot of planes registered to European airlines at this point. Secondly, on the EU 55, with the EU planning to add a lot more cost into this, and I acknowledge that we'll have to see what the final policy proposal will be. Do you think that adding carbon cost in whichever way impairs the sector's ability to grow as fast as it has over the past decade? How should we think about Ryanair's opportunities amid a slower sector growth kind of in the 2020s? Thanks.
Thanks. Again, you go back to the capacity. The obvious ones are the failures, the Flybe, the Level, Thomas Cook, and others. The more interesting, I think, underbelly is the short-haul capacity that's come out. Norwegian has collapsed. They've gone from a fleet of 120 to close to 20 aircraft. SAS has cut short-haul capacity. Alitalia has already announced 25% capacity reduction, I'd suspect they'll do more, TAP is in a similar boat. Underneath that you have the question is, how much short-haul recovery is there? Do Lufthansa operate Air France and others? What drives a lot of that, I think into summer 2022 and into summer 2023, is a huge amount of their short-haul capacity is there to feed into and to feed from their long-haul hub networks.
Without the long-haul traffic, without the Chinese and the Asians wandering around Europe next summer, I think that there will be huge pressure on those legacy airlines or the subsidy junkies, as we call them. I think they will keep short-haul capacity reasonably modest because they're under some pressure to repay debt and refund or repay state aid. The only two players out there at the moment with any significant short-haul orders over the next four years are Ryanair with over 210 aircraft on order and Wizz with about 80. Wizz are in chaos at the moment. They did let go a lot of pilots and cabin crew. They're clearly struggling to reemploy them, or they're not current. In the last couple of weeks, Wizz have been canceling hundreds of flights on a daily basis in Italy and across Central Europe.
We've seen already in Vienna, where they compete with us, they've canceled 14 of their main trunk routes out of Vienna for the summer, July and August. They say they're going to restart in September. We're not sure they will. They have enormous operational challenges. I know there are some misguided analysts out there who believe Wizz will conquer the world, despite the fact that they have a higher cost base than Ryanair and an inability to deliver in Western Europe. We think that they are suffering enormous challenges at the moment, including wet leasing in Romanian aircraft to prop up their pretty small Italian operation at a time when we are, I think our load factors in Italy are about 70%+, and theirs are mid-50s.
The real focus, I think, for the next number of years will be the slow pace of recovery, I think, of the short-haul operations of the legacy carriers because they won't have the long-haul feed to or from their short-haul operations in the meantime. The question is, how long will they be able to fill the bed block slots at the major airports? Clearly, the EU is going to allow them to block them again until this winter, but they're getting down to 50/50. I think we'll have a major push on for summer of 2022 when it's going to become more noticeable that if they don't want to use those slots, they have to lose them. On EU Fit for 55, look, there's no doubt that the sector as a whole is going to face increasing environmental taxes in the next couple of years.
What we would ask and demand is that the environmental burden is shared fairly between long-haul operators in Europe and short-haul. We've been bearing an equitable burden of environmental tax on short-haul flying while connecting traffic, for example, the Dutch, who talk a lot about environmental impact of aviation, give KLM a complete free ride on all connecting traffic going to and from Schiphol. Those kind of environmental scams need to end, particularly when they're taking place in the countries who are most likely to lecture the rest of Europe on how we should behave environmentally, particularly with regards to air travel. Put your own aviation house in order first before you start lecturing the peripheral countries or the tourism economies who are hugely dependent on intra-EU air travel. I go back again to what has always been our contention.
Taxes that are levied on a pro-rata basis will not immediately impact the margin or the price difference or the cost difference we have over all other airlines in Europe. Therefore, people will, I think if anything, it heightens the growth that Ryanair will enjoy over the next number of years, because if there's an overall ratcheting upwards of the cost of air travel, the lowest cost provider, which will be Ryanair in all markets and not Wizz or EasyJet or anybody else, will do better and will recover stronger. We see that already borne out in this summer's recovery. We've been able to deliver a much faster and stronger recovery than any of the low-cost competitors. If you look across to domestic U.S.A., the post-pandemic recovery in domestic flying has been much more robust.
They've gone back to above pre-COVID traffic levels, and we think we will benefit from that over the next 12 repeating months here in Europe. Next question, please.
Thank you. That comes from the line of Sathish Sivakumar of Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks. I've got a couple of questions. Firstly, on the ancillary revenue. Obviously, you've seen a big step-up in ancillary revenues. Where are you seeing further additional opportunities in terms of new products? Where do you see it normalizing from the current levels of EUR 22? The second one is around the hedging. What is your thoughts around the hedging of both for fuel and carbon as we move into FY 2023 and beyond?
Okay. Eddie, why don't you take Sathish's question, and then Neil can then come in on the ancillary, the hedging and the carbon hedging question.
Ancillaries are strong there. It's primarily driven by priority boarding on seats. As I indicated in previous calls, for the last year, we've been working on a number of initiatives here in terms of dynamic pricing and as with other products. I would caution that we are in low load factors at the moment whereby selection of seats or whatever may well be at somewhat of a premium. I feel there's still more initiatives to come. There's still some road on this, but it's particularly on the core ones of seats priority boarding and also on bags, how they're presented and how they're priced on individual routes. We've been doing a lot of work on that. We're going to have to wait for load factors to return to see how effective that they are.
Just to put that back, Eddie, though, do you expect ancillary revenue per passenger to rise faster or slightly slower than passenger traffic recovery in the next few years?
Yeah. I think it is. I'd expect it still to rise. What I'm saying is that I wouldn't get carried away with things because the strong performance particularly on seats of lower load factors, you have to see whether that translates when load factors return, because people may well have been conscious of where they pick seats During the COVID crisis. There are lots of other initiatives that are coming that I am reasonably confident that we're going to see some growth on the core products and ancillary revenue.
Just to add to that, I think if we can retain the kind of EUR 22 or slightly below that we have seen in passenger and traffic growth this year, that would be a pretty good performance, and we would be hoping to improve on that in the next year and beyond. Just on the hedging and the carbon, we are well hedged for this year, about 60% hedged at $555 a metric ton, which is below about $630 a ton in the market today. We are 35% hedged into next year, at about $600 a ton.
We would plan to potentially move that up over time to about 50%, and possibly hold it at that, although we are looking at some other structures on top of that. Carbon, well hedged. 100% hedged for the current year at EUR 24 in the EUA, which is well below the EUR 50, EUR 52 that it is trading at today. Again, about 35% hedged for next year. We've been holding off on hedging because we're waiting to see what was going to happen with the U.K. ETS. That's been confirmed in the past couple of weeks. We'll start looking at adding a little bit to our hedging into FY 2023 and beyond on the carbon.
Okay. Thanks, guys. Next question please. Thanks, David.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Muneeba Kayani of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead. Your line is open, please.
Hi. Thanks for the call. I realize that pricing visibility is low, but could you indicate in your net profit guidance of small loss to break even, what sort of pricing environment is kind of baked into that guidance? Secondly, operating cash flow recovery was very good in the quarter, driven by bookings. How should we be thinking about operating cash flows in the second quarter as flight activity picks up? Thank you.
Thank you very much. As usual on these calls, we're not going anywhere near pricing guidance. It's completely too hard to call. We think we are reasonably accurate with our volume guidance. We think we'll continue to deliver strong performance on ancillary revenues, there's too much uncertainty over pricing. I wouldn't add any color to that. I think the overall outline for the year is an improvement. We're into a small loss, maybe even break even, I wouldn't break down what that's based on. Operating cash flows clearly in the second half of the year will be much more heavily impacted by CapEx. We've announced that we've begun to pay once more pre-delivery payments to Boeing. I think it'll flatten out from here and actually slightly decline as we get towards the end of the year. I mean, too much more big CapEx.
Neil, do you want to add anything there on the cash flow?
Well, I think that's fair enough. The bulk of the CapEx come in in Q2. There was about EUR 200 million, and then over the course of the balance of the year, it's about EUR 1.2 billion in CapEx. You'll see that drop back a bit toward the end of this quarter. We would anticipate that as we get into the fourth quarter, it'll all be more normalized booking for that stage, and you'll start to see that build up into the year-end. We're dropping back for the next number of months.
Thanks, Neil. Yeah, just again, to conclude on the pricing guidance for all participants. While I don't want to get into any details, it is our philosophy here, and I think it has been clearly vindicated in the recovery in Q1 and Q2. We will be load factor active price passive. We are determined to recover traffic as quickly as we possibly can, then I think over the second half of the year, we would expect to see load factors recover back up to high 80s%. Probably won't operate above 90% this year. As we build back our forward bookings and load factors, then we would expect to see pricing recover on the back of that. Next question please.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Furlong with Davy. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, Michael. Can you just talk about the, as you build back up the cabin crew environment. I mean, obviously you have I saw this, 2,000 new pilots in the next five years. Also it's been training and things like that. The second thing is, I was just wondering with the 60+ [MAX] aircraft coming for next summer, presuming you're in discussions, I see you with a number of airports on that. I see you've launched new bases in Turin and Morocco, if you might just comment about that would be good too.
Okay. I'll give you the second half of that. The new base and new route discussion. I mean, in pilots and cabin crew environments, it has never been better, but there are enormous shortfall challenges. One of the challenges we have as an industry, not just Ryanair, is we've been essentially grounded for the last 18 months. It has been very difficult to keep pilots and cabin crew current. A pilot has to fly about once a month, and cabin crew, I think have to fly, I'll get this wrong, but if I do, correct me, once every 90 days, about three months. It's been with a very curtailed schedule. We've actually been flying empty aircraft up there to keep pilots current and cabin crew current because we knew that the recovery, when it came, would be very strong.
We believe that's one of the reasons why EasyJet's recovery has been so slow, that they have grounded a lot of aircraft pilots and cabin crew, and therefore they're dealing with recurrency problems. If you didn't keep them current, you'd put pilots back into simulator training and cabin crew have to go back and do quite unproductive recurrency training courses again, and that's just difficult, and it's a huge logistical nightmare. I think we've been vindicated in trying to keep everybody current because we thought that the recovery would be strong. As we emerge out of this, there is a huge surplus of pilots, particularly on 737s across Europe with the Norwegian collapse. They were the only other significant 737 employer in Europe. Also, the Gulf carriers have dumped huge numbers of pilots and just cut them loose in the Middle East. They're backing essentially in Europe.
A lot of the Asian carriers have cut back, although in recent months they've started to re-recruit again. They appear to be trying to re-recruit among Asian nationalities rather than Europeans. We also have restarted very aggressively our cadet training schemes, which have dried up after we had been piloting the rostering crisis in late 2017. Currently, we have more than 350 pilot cadets in training. They're paying us on average about EUR 30,000, and they will flow through over the next 12-18 months. We're opening up and have one of our partners, we feel, a very large new aviation pilot cabin crew training center in Dublin, which we'll announce shortly. There's a huge on the cabin crew side, again, there's lots of availability out there, but there is a five-week training course from Ab Initio.
The challenge for us is we have enough pilots and cabin crew now to operate 90% of our pre-COVID capacities through July and August, but it's tight. It's particularly being impacted too where you think like the U.K. pandemic, where people are being, despite the fact that they're double vaccinated, getting pinged and told you've got to isolate for 10 days, which is a nonsense where you're double vaccinated, but it is what it is. There is a huge challenge of recruitment for us, though, into the next 12 months. We will be recruiting huge numbers of pilots and cabin crew this winter just to crew up to 60 new aircraft we have for next year, and also to handle normal attrition.
Again, I think the collapse of competition, the capacity cutbacks across Europe, we have worked very closely and well with unions in the last two years to explain that, look, it's better that our people take very modest pay cuts last year and this year. We're starting to repay those or to restore those pay cuts over the next two or three years. We're in pretty good shape, we don't foresee any labor or staff shortages over the next two or three years. Just as important, we don't see any labor or staff inflation over the next two or three years. One of the other challenge there will be in the short term, in the next number of weeks, though, is airports and handling companies. We had a lot of problems at a lot of airports over this weekend.
You've gone straight back into kind of the peak weekend. Handling companies who were short-staffed. Airport check-ins short-staffed. Airport security short-staffed. We saw our on-time performance fall from 95% - 80% on Saturday and Sunday, mainly as a result of ATC staffing. Sure, they've done nothing for 18 months. Then, of course, as usual, the French and Germans are generally short-staffed on Saturday mornings. We've had airport issues as well. We'll work our way through that, but it'll be a bit painful over the next couple of weeks. Then I think we're in reasonably good shape into the summer of 2022, but there is a Herculean recruitment and training job to be done. Eddie, do you want to touch on the aircraft?
Yeah.
The aircraft and the.
Yeah.
How the new routes and those linkages.
Can I just clarify one point there? On the pilot, our recruitment is exclusively on the cadet side because obviously we have enough captains and everything for not only this summer and next winter, but next summer as well, because we have all the people coming through on command upgrades. It's a primary focus on first officers and particular cadets. Just on the capacity allocation, you're looking out there and the competitors retrenching. We've got the new aircraft that have come in. You've got airports now actively looking for the attributes of 40% less noise emissions, and we've been able to exploit those opportunities. If you look in particular, the ones that I would call out are in Scandinavia, like Arlanda. I think we've been talking to them for the last 20 years, and they realize the writing's on the wall there.
SAS aren't growing, Norwegian are all but gone out of Arlanda. We've manipulated the opportunity within that sort of Nordic region of we launched nine routes out of Helsinki. Again, Norwegian gone out of there, Helsinki looking around as to where their growth is. It's different from the last time we launched any sort of capacity in Scandinavia way back in 2003, 2004, where we were flying from secondary airport to secondary airport. We've got extra capacity going into Gothenburg and places like that. I see opportunities there for us to sort of knit that network together in the face of reducing capacity from SAS and Norwegian.
If you look down in Italy, where most of the Italian airports are saying, "Why aren't we a Ryanair base?" Are sort of, again, it took us some time to close out the sort of Turin deal, but we've got a very strong domestic network out of there. We've got still some announcements to do in Italy as we build out the network there. We are in Marco Polo. We've opened a base in Turin. We put extra capacity into Naples and into Ciampino, where Wizz actually had canceled, I think, eight of the nine routes that they launched.
You see places like Morocco where we were recently, where the government down there is anxious to say, "Where's the growth going to come from there?" They want to substantially increase our capacity there, and part of that plan is opening two base aircraft in Agadir, which will go particularly well, I think, in the wintertime.
Again, it's. Airports are coming to us. We closed seven long-term deals with our three, I suppose, major hubs, which are Stansted, Bergamo, and Charleroi. Everyone's saying, "How can we get a piece of that?" I think those opportunities are going to still present themselves. Now, some places are still slow to come on board and think that it's all going to bounce back, and there isn't going to be 20% reduction in inter-European capacity. We're certainly seeing it out there, and we are in countries like particularly Italy, as they say with ease. Their airports saying, or their management, their shareholders are saying, "Why don't we have a Ryanair base?" Because it's the only room to grow.
Great. Thanks Eddie. Thanks Michael.
Okay. Thanks, Stephen. Next question, please.
Thank you. That's from the line of Mark Simpson at Goodbody. Please go ahead. Your line's open.
Mark, hey.
Morning. Two questions. One, you talked the MAX as performing well, good reception from customers. Fuel burn, I think, has been indicated as surprising against previous guidance. Can you give us a broader feel for how you see the MAX performance? Things like turnaround times, I know difficult in the circumstances of COVID rules, but it'd be interesting to hear a bit more about that. Longer term, you've talked about a goal of 12.5% SAF by 2030, well ahead of the Fit for 55 to a 5% target. What I'm interested there is how do you achieve that? SAF infrastructure issues are clearly going to be one of the roadblocks to achieving those targets. Do you have plans around your key bases, Stansted, Bergamo, for some form of SAF infrastructure to help you achieve those targets?
Okay. Thanks, Mark. I'm going to ask the director of sustainability, Thomas Fowler, maybe to answer the second half of the question. I'll take the MAX one, and Neil, you can add in if you want to this. Look, I think the MAX performance in the first month has been extraordinary. I would also caution, we're operating with a load factor in the last month where it looks like it's kind of about 75%- 76%, as opposed to normally in June, July, we'd be operating up at around 90%- 92%. We're flying slightly lighter planes where the turnarounds have been unaffected, 25 minutes, no great issue. Remember, it is only eight extra seats. The turnaround, no issue at all. Fuel performance has been meaningfully better, close to 20% savings.
Again, I suspect that as you get back up to more normal high 80, low 90 load factors. I think we are very confident now that the aircraft will come in at 16% or slightly better than that on the fuel savings. The noise performance has been extraordinary. There's been meaningful kind of feedback from passengers about how, and crew, how quiet the aircraft are. It's not something we would ever go to kind of sell. We were worried at the start that there would be a kind of pushback from passengers. We've gone to some considerable length to indicate that if you want to get off the aircraft, you can. Not one passenger in the first five weeks of operation has wanted to offload off the aircraft. There's lots of nervous passengers out there. It has generally gone remarkably well.
The pilot feedback is universally positive. The handling has been excellent. The performance of the aircraft has been excellent. They like shiny new toys at the best of times, but it has been very, very well favorably received, and the cabin crew like the aircraft. No issues with the new galleys, the new layouts. Again, all of the performance in the first five weeks has been slightly kind of artificially enhanced by the fact that we're operating at load factors of high 70s instead of load factors in the low 90s. We think that's a good thing, though. It does mean we plan to take our 12th aircraft in probably the first 10 days of August.
The fact that we have 10 or 12 of those aircraft in the system through the summer when weather conditions are good, pilots and cabin crew rotating through the aircraft, everybody getting a feel for it. It is a really, for us, this nice slow introduction into the system. This winter, we take probably another 60+ aircraft if Boeing can deliver them all, at a time when we're not under any great pressure. From a kind of just an operational safety, it's good that we're able to introduce these aircraft at a time when we can allow the pilots, the cabin crew, the airport, the handlers to get used to them. It has gone remarkably well. The performance of the aircraft thus far, and certainly the one we care most about, which is fuel consumption, has been exceptional.
To be fair, we thought it would be because Boeing were willing to guarantee 16% fuel savings. Again, I think that would be key in our pushback on the Fit for 55 and taxing short-haul aircraft. Here we are investing over EUR 20 billion in a fleet of new aircraft that consumes considerably less fuel and is remarkably quieter than almost any aircraft operating in Europe. That should be reflected in future environmental taxation. With that, Thomas, do you want to give us a quick run-through on SAF and what we're doing to develop and improve supply of SAF for 2030?
Yeah, no problem at all. Mark, thanks for the question. I think obviously at the moment on the infrastructure, yes, there's issues. That's why we've done the partnership with Trinity to try and see with SAF are the best to invest in and show our fuel suppliers, our key fuel suppliers, which are the best ones to invest in for the goal of 12.5%. We've been working with Trinity in the next 12 months, and then obviously with our key major suppliers and our key bases on what infrastructure needs to be put in for that SAF to meet the target of 2030. That's where our main focus is in the next 12 and 24 months.
Yeah, at the moment there, the only key markets where we can pick up SAF is up in Scandinavia. We would hope to see that get rolled out over the next few years. As Thomas said, significant investment and research needed to get the right blends in the right place. It's also one of the pushbacks as well on the Fit for 55. They're announcing all this taxation, but there's been no allocation of these taxation revenue to developing sustained or high-volume SAF.
They've set the target themselves of 5% SAF for 2030, but the program is silent on how you get there and how you put the infrastructure in place at European airports. We'll be calling for much more work from our Dutch friend, Mr. Timmermans, and some of the other eco warriors there in Europe. A, start taxing your own Dutch airline. B, tell us what you're going to do with all this money to actually help us to exceed these ambitious targets on SAF. Next question, please. Thanks, Mark.
Next question comes from the line of Savi Syth at Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Sav, good morning.
Good morning. You noted strong bookings in August and September. I was just curious if you're seeing any signs that with return to office still uncertain in Europe, if there's perhaps a higher floor to the usual seasonal drop-off in traffic that you're seeing based on current bookings. Also, just to follow up on the near-term bottlenecks you talked about, Michael. You talked about crew and airports. I was wondering what you're seeing on the maintenance line side and if there's any kind of a supply issue there and if in addition to route charges, if you're expecting maintenance to be a headwind over the next couple of years.
Okay. Thanks for that, Savi. I'll take the forward bookings. Neil might actually come in on the maintenance side. On the forward bookings, look, we're all in the lab. It's quite speculative here at the moment. Our focus for the last number of months has been to try to stimulate and ensure that we could provide for our operators a very strong recovery into Q2. 8 million passengers in June, 9 million in July. We might get just to 10 million in August. Our view of life is that if 80% or 85% of the European adult population is vaccinated by the time we get to the end of August into early September, the schools go back to work. Our schools go back. Most families have been able to travel in reasonable safety and confidence during July, August, the peak autumn European holiday season.
We think we start to replicate what the U.S. has seen, a very strong recovery of short-haul intra-EU air travel. Business travel gets back. Meeting suppliers, conferences, postponed events get refixed. We think weekly, if we get 10 million in August, and again, there's no adverse kind of consequences. We see no reason why we wouldn't maintain maybe 10 million into September, and we're looking out into Q3, and I'd be hopeful of averaging 10 million passengers a month across Q3 as well. It may be even better than that, but I think people who've been locked up for the last 18 months will want to go for weekend breaks away, will want to go to the Christmas markets. There'll be a strong short-haul recovery in, I think, business travel. There's a lot of talk about Zoom ending business travel. It won't.
If you haven't met your suppliers for the last 18 months, you need to get back out and see them. You haven't made any sales calls. You're not going to do that on Zoom. We think an awful lot of that. There will be a very strong rebound in VFR or weddings that were postponed, christenings that are postponed, those family events that were postponed that people haven't seen. I'm not a believer in that people won't return to the office. I think the office employers will want people back in the office. I think there's no doubt we are facing much more flexible working conditions into the future. If you look at what we're doing in Ryanair, we're saying people, we're building now back to the office.
We are looking, though, at reaching agreements with our people that maybe you can do three days a week in the office, two days a week from home. There will be lots of that kind of flexibility. The idea that offices are going to close and people will not return, I think, is absurd. I also think socially, people, younger people particularly, want to work from offices. It's where they meet a lot of people. We think it's coming back, and I think the best indication of that is the U.S. There was very strong recovery in U.S. domestic air travel. I think that will be replicated in European short-haul, with the one exception is that we would still be missing the long-haul connecting traffic on which the legacy or the state aid junkies are so dependent upon for filling up their short hauls.
That could lead to they run all their short hauls to capacity and just dump prices. We don't think they have the balance sheets, or they depend on state aid allowance to do that. As France already said, they're very focused on only flying what they can fill and repaying the state aid as quickly as they can, and we think most of the other airlines will operate on that basis. We will take up most of that short-haul slack, and I would think anywhere crafting delivery this autumn. Neil, on the maintenance side?
Yeah. Savi, thanks for the question there. With the exception of just doing a ramp-up in capacity and cycles that you go through the shop, no major increases coming through. In fact, we've locked in better rates with our engine maintenance providers going forward. We've built up huge expertise of maintaining the aircraft ourselves over the years, and we do a lot of our own maintenance in-house. There's no difficulty getting access to appropriately qualified engineers. In fact, we're taking in more mechanics and apprentices to help us grow those in the next few years. We've got new hangar capacity coming on train in places like Seville, and we're looking at building a couple of new hangars across Europe over the next year or two.
One of the benefits of the MAX coming in is it enables us now to exit some of the older, more expensive-to-maintain aircraft from the fleet. I think you'll see some sales over the next number of months and years. We've already handed back all of the leased 737s, which were a bit older than we would have liked due to the delayed aircraft coming in from Boeing. That's all been sorted out. I don't see too many headwinds, Savi, on the maintenance side for the next few years.
I would just add to that, we've been reasonably judicious over the last 12 months. We've invested. We've acquired a new office building beside ours at the Airside, where we've opened up a new Ryanair technical center, where we've moved all of our engineering fleet planning in there. It's about a 30,000 sq ft building. We, as I said, will shortly announce. We've invested about EUR 10 million in a new aviation training center close to Dublin Airport. Four simulators, cabin crew training. It kind of quadruples our training capacity in Dublin in addition to large kind of crew training centers in Bergamo, Frankfurt, and others. We've kept investing judiciously through the crisis and the shutdown, and we now have those facilities and those resources coming on stream for both our pilot and cabin crew and our technical team.
Thanks, Eddie. Next question, please.
Thank you. That's from James Hollins at Exane BNP Paribas.
James, hi.
Hi, morning. Michael, Eddie, you sound like a couple of kids at Christmas when you talk about the growth opportunities and your excitement. You clearly think about Italy, Scandinavia as good examples. I'm just wondering if you sort of need to, or even want to go after some of the more established operators, the state aid junkies, your words, not mine, in Western Europe, or whether there's sufficient growth elsewhere. The second one, either for Thomas or Juliusz, if he's on. On this Fit for 55, you're obviously apoplectic about the sort of kerosene tax, it won't work, et cetera. Wondering what chance you actually have of getting some changes to Fit for 55, and won't they just say, "CORSIA deals with long-haul?
Okay, yeah. I'll ask Juliusz maybe to comment and Thomas to add on the second. First half, yes, I think we will see more growth, particularly at primary airports. I mean, we're pushing hard, for example, for further release of slots in Italy and Portugal, where TAP and ANA are still sitting on some of them, which anybody knows they won't use in the future because they've already reduced the fleet. There will be further opportunities in Germany, where there has been significant closures of Germanwings have significantly reduced capacity. Again, we'll be opportunistic. I think most of our growth, if I was to look at the next two or three years, where will you place the 200 aircraft?
The ones I would point to would be the first one would be those larger base airports where we've already rolled out significant long-term lengthenings of our low-cost agreements with Stansted, Bergamo, Charleroi. I would say pivot. There will still be a lot of new route development in Scandinavia and what we would call central and Eastern Europe, where we're seeing pullbacks by Wizz and others. They seem short of aircraft, they're moving aircraft further east into Dubai and elsewhere. Italy, Spain, Portugal continue to be very strong contenders for more capacity development. We're investing heavily in a new maintenance facility in Seville. France, we've opened up bases in Toulouse. I think they emptied the base opening in Paris-Beauvais . The U.K., there's also opportunities there, although I'm not sure how much more new base opportunities there are. There could be a number of U.K. airports.
We've announced a new base in Newcastle. We are pushing, for example, even in Holland, where KLM is still bed blocking slots at Schiphol. We continue to ask why Lelystad, which is owned by KLM, is not being opened. We ask why Montijo beside Lisbon, which is owned by ANA, is not being opened so that we can deliver further growth in those markets. I have never seen in 30 years the amount of growth potential we have over the next four years. We could allocate the 200 new MAX aircraft twice over, I think, in the next four years. We're not able to do that, so we will be judicious. We will also churn some of our own underperforming airports and bases because there is more growth opportunities out there and more growth incentives out there than we can, I would say, manage at the moment.
Juliusz or maybe Thomas, you want to comment on Fit for 55 and how we push back?
Yeah, I'll come in quickly. Juliusz here. Hi, everyone. There's no unanimity in the EU at the moment on fuel taxation, and there has never been. These proposals generally emanate from countries in the old Central Europe, in the Netherlands. You see some support for it in Belgium, in parts of Germany, in parts of France. Those are countries which are very well connected by road and rail infrastructure, and their position is dramatically different from that of countries on the peripheries of Europe, from the Baltic State, from Scandinavia down to Greece, and then through the Mediterranean. The countries which are dependent on tourism they are very concerned about the increase in the cost of access that such taxes may bring. We are in regular contact with governments in those countries as part of our lobbying efforts in Brussels.
We know that the conversations in the Council of the European Union about this tax will not be swift, and they will not be easy. I think there will be a lot of upset from some of the tourism-dependent nations at the suggestion that cost of access may need to go up quite significantly over the next few years. I think this is not over, and we will do our best to highlight those inequalities which are being proposed by a taxation measure that only targets short-haul rather than short-haul and long-haul.
Just on your point, James, on CORSIA. The CORSIA offset credit is an offset program rather than impact. At the moment they're trading three points less than the current EUA prices. There's a disparity there between what's going on and how we do.
Very nice.
Okay. Thanks, guys. Next question, please, guys. We've got to end this call at 11. We need to probably get through a couple as quick as we can. There's the last five minutes of this call.
Sure. The next one's from the line of Neil Glynn of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead, your line's open.
It's Neil.
Hi there. Two quick topics here. Just one of your latest applications with respect to appealing the navigation charge increase prospect. Then some applications on timing. The second question, just with respect to the long return as carbon consciousness continues to develop among consumers. Is there an opportunity or even a need to credential a carbon footprint relative to competitors in the booking process, like people like Skyscanner do? How do you think about your communication going forward, Michael?
Okay. Neil, I didn't hear all that question, but we need to speed. Neil, can you answer the first half on the nav charge, and maybe Thomas briefly answer the second on the carbon footprint, as far as I can tell?
Okay. I'll pass the ATC charge question over to Juliusz. It was a bit hazy though, could you maybe give that again? Just couldn't pick it up correctly on that.
Yeah, sure. Skyscanner, for example, will highlight your carbon footprint on a given route relative to competitors. Is that something Ryanair should be doing to communicate most effectively with carbon-conscious consumers going forward?
Yeah. On the carbon side, in fact, in the last number of days, we've launched a carbon calculator, which enables our customers to fully offset their carbon footprint. That's very much up and live, and we've already seen good take-up in relation to that. We're continuously looking at different ways of differentiating ourselves. We're not shy in pointing out that if people switch to Ryanair, they can reduce their carbon footprint by 50% compared to the legacy carriers, and there'll be more comms like that going forward. It's not in the booking process yet. Doesn't mean it won't be in it at some stage in the future. The carbon calculator was the most recent initiative, and I'd say it's proving very popular.
Yeah. I think, look, there is talk at the IATA level as well, Neil, about an eco label where the airlines will feed in their information, like the Skyscanner side of things. At the moment, Skyscanner and Google calculations are very generic. They aren't fully reflective of the actual numbers, and there is a bit of work going on that at the moment at European level.
I think people are getting more aware of things like CDP as well, and ratings on that, and that will help drive decisions into the future.
And then-
Okay, thanks. Can we get the next question, please?
That question comes from the line of Jarrod Castle at UBS. Please go ahead.
Jarrod.
James. Hi, good morning. You're moving more into the primary airports, you said from 70 to 80 and going back a decade, you were probably sub 50. Are you targeting a more affluent client base? At some point, will we actually see the average fares rise? Just given the experience cumulatively over the last few years, that hasn't been the case. Then just secondly, Michael, any quick thoughts on the customer advisory panel? Is this part of Always Getting Better? What kind of questions will you try get them to answer besides cheaper sales with better service or something like that?
Okay. Well since that's a jack question, I'll give that back to Eddie for just to close on the call. Now, just in general, Neil, the move into getting more slots and basing more aircraft at primary airports is not some kind of quest for an affluent client base. It's simply us being opportunistic. That's where the slots are available, and that's where some of the better growth is at the moment because those airports are the ones suffering the greatest traffic and capacity loss through COVID. Will fares rise because we get a more affluent client base? No. We are happy to take more affluent customers or more ordinary customers. They all pay from the same fare classes. We don't discriminate. I think it's inevitable that what will really actually drive fare rises in the next two or three years will be shortage of intra-EU capacity.
There is going to be meaningful shortages of capacity short-haul EU capacity reductions. I think that and a combination of that and probably increased environmental taxation will undoubtedly put upward pressure on airfares and yields. We will be poised, I think, to be a significant beneficiary of that as we roll out 210 new aircraft at lower operating cost. Probably, if anything, a less intensely competitive environment in those markets where we're expanding. Eddie, do you want to touch briefly on the customer panel?
Yeah. We have the first meeting of that in early September. Really behind that, I suppose, is building on our digital offering, particularly from a customer service point of view. Day to travel app with gate information, gate changes, on time information, et cetera. There's a lot of other developments coming on that over the next number of months. We'll just see from the customer service, from the panel as to what ideas they have. Some of the people on that panel already have sent in and really active in terms of the suggestions that they have.
Also, what we've learned through the whole COVID experience of refunds, dealing with disruptions on the day. We've got some, I think on this the last time, we'll have some announcements later this year on how we deal more efficiently with customer disruption for the less than 1% of flights that we have disruptions on, and how we actually get that information out to people in our 240 airports so that people know exactly what's happening. How they get their refunds processed, how we deal with EU261, and deal with that in a much more efficient manner. That's going to be the focus of it. We still retain all the other initiatives that we've had over the Always Getting Better program of the two bags on board and all that. We're going to continue to build on that.
It's really about what we learned from disruption, more leveraging of technology in terms of getting information out for our customers. We're really looking forward to the first meeting with the seven people, I think, across seven different markets. We'll let you know on the next call.
Okay. Thanks, Eddie. I know we've gone over time, but we'll have one last question and then I'm afraid we'll close it down. If we've missed anybody, please route your questions through to me, to Neil Sorahan, and Neil and Peter in the customer investor relations panel. Let's take one last question, Marvin, then we will wrap up.
Thank you. We had a follow-up from Neil Glynn, I believe you missed his second question. Neil Glynn of Credit Suisse.
Hey, Neil.
He's hung up, so I will take the next question from Carolina Dores of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi everyone.
Carolina.
I'll be quite quick. On the yields in this first quarter that has started, the first quarter of 2022, is there a mix of routes effect on lowering yields, meaning more domestic or more really short routes that is taking the price down? Or is it just a really active price coming down? My second question, if I may, is the supplier reimbursement that we got this quarter, the EUR 140 million. Is there more of these to come?
Well, firstly, I think, no, there won't be more of the supplier reimbursements. At least I hope there won't be any more supplier reimbursements. We've negotiated, now that we're into the recovery phase, reimbursements we've negotiated with not just one, but a range of suppliers, we think will come to an end. The lower fare in yield has been a function in Q1 of very much later traffic or booking curve. We would normally go into the summer with very strong advanced bookings. People already booked all their holidays. We had almost none of that in the system because of the huge COVID uncertainty.
As we went through, when you look at the speed of the recovery from 1 million passengers in April to 2 million in May, to 5 million in June, 9 million in July, that has all been built on very late, very close in, aggressive pricing to capture that volume. We believe that that will begin to reflect itself in a marked rise in fares and yields probably towards the back end of the second quarter, but mainly into the third quarter once we get back to kind of post our pre-COVID norms. All of that presupposes that there's no adverse news flows, no further introduction of restrictions on passenger movements around Europe, and schools reopen in September. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation this morning. I'm sorry we had to cut it short after an hour.
As again, I hope we tried to emphasize that the recovery is well underway. We are exploiting that recovery faster and I think much more operationally efficiently than any other airline in Europe. I think if you look out over the medium term into the next two or three years, we have a unique opportunity with the delivery of 210 MAX aircraft, all of which the first of which have now been delivered are operating exceptionally well. Huge new growth opportunities at existing primary and secondary airports. You'll see us, I think, grab a significant wins on market share front across most Western, Central, and Eastern European markets over the next two to four years. As long as we can safely say that by September of this year, the pandemic is behind us and there are no developments of vaccine-resistant variants or the restoration of lockdowns.
With that, as I said, I apologize if we missed anybody's questions or didn't get around to you. Please call Neil and Peter in Dublin this morning. We'd be happy to speak to all of you individually. There's no roadshow for the Q1 as is normal. With that, we look forward to speaking with and hopefully meeting with you in person on the Q2 at the end of October. Thanks very much, everybody. Good to talk to you. Bye-bye.
That concludes the conference. Thank you all very much for attending. You can now disconnect your lines.