Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Ryanair Half 1 Results Podcast. I'm Michael O'Leary, the Group CEO. I'm joined this morning by Neil Sorahan, the Group CFO.
Good morning.
As you've seen on the Ryanair.com website this morning, we've announced strong half-year profits of EUR 1.37 billion after tax. The summer 2022 traffic and fares have recovered strongly above where they were pre-COVID in 2019. We remain cautious for the remainder of the winter, which will be loss-making, and could be affected by further cases of COVID variants or adverse political developments in the Ukraine. However, let's focus on the first half of the year. As I said, we reported strong half-year profits. I think the important thing was that the traffic recovered strongly to 95 million passengers. That's 11% gain over the pre-COVID 86 million we carried in FY 2020.
Fares in the second quarter were up 14%, having been lower in Q1, again, due to the impact of the Ukraine invasion on Easter and the June quarter. We already have our FY 2023 fuel hedged 81% at about $67 per barrel. We've made significant progress in recent months in extending those hedges out into FY 2024, where we're now 50% hedged at $93 per barrel. Net debt, which I think is one of the strongest measures of financial health, has been cut significantly. It's down to EUR 0.5 billion at the end of September, down from EUR 1.45 billion at 31st of March. We continue to focus heavily on the environment.
We're very proud of the fact that we're now operating a growing number of Boeing 737-8200 Gamechanger aircraft, which carries 4% more passengers, but burn 16% less fuel and reduce our noise emissions by 40%. Over the half year, we continued to invest with Trinity College Dublin in their sustainable aviation research center. We've signed partnerships with Neste to power up to one-third of our Schiphol flights with 40% SAF blend. We've also signed a long-term deal with OMV in September to purchase up to 160 tons of SAFs at our airports across Austria, Germany, Central and Eastern Europe.
We've also, I'm pleased to say, concluded an agreement to retrofit Split Scimitar winglets on our 409 737 NG aircraft, which will reduce fuel burn by a further 1.5%. Through A4E and the EU, we're campaigning to accelerate reform of European ATC to eliminate the needless flight delays, which will be the single most important initiative Europe can take to substantially reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. We're delighted to announce that our industry-leading Ryanair has seen an improvement in our climate rating by the Carbon Disclosure Project. It has increased to a B rating in the last 12 months. More recently, Sustainalytics has ranked Ryanair the number one airline in Europe for our ESG performance. We'll touch ensuring the Q&A later on our social commitments.
We're pleased to say that we now have negotiated long-term pay agreements with over 90% of our pilots and our cabin crew. These long-term agreements, which include pay restoration or restoration of the pay that was where we had agreed pay cuts during COVID as a better alternative to job losses. These pay agreements brought forward that pay restoration by 24 months to April 2023, subject to our business recovery. However, following our group's very strong H1 financial and operational performance, we now have agreed with our unions to bring forward the full restoration of pay for all crews who are covered by these long-term pay agreements to the first of December. In other words, in a month's time. These crews will now receive their full pay restoration in the Christmas payroll.
We still have some small, less than 10% of our pilots and cabin crew who are not covered by these pay restoration agreements, most notably the Belgian pilots and the Irish pilots. We've written again to those unions inviting them to return to meaningful negotiations about pay restoration so that they too can share in the pay restoration that has been agreed with over 90% of their fellow pilots and cabin crew. Turning to operational performance, we had a very strong summer. This year, Ryanair, uniquely across Europe, operated 115% of our pre-COVID capacity. We completed over 3,000 daily flights. I'm pleased to say we avoided the staff shortages that characterized the performance of so many of our competitor airlines this year.
However, like all other EU airlines, our flights were affected by unprecedented ATC disruptions and regrettable airport security delays, particularly in the first quarter. We had 73 Gamechangers in the fleet for peak summer 2022, but our growth into next year could be hampered by Boeing's continuing inability to meet its delivery schedule, not just in Q3 of this year, the December quarter, but we're also seeing risks to delivery in Q4, which is the March quarter, and much more importantly, in next year's fiscal Q1, being the June quarter. Boeing assures that they'll deliver all 51 Gamechangers ahead of peak summer 2023, but we think there's a growing risk that there could be some slippage in these deliveries.
Our reliability, our lowest costs, our very strong fuel and US dollar hedges, the fact that we own the vast majority of our fleet, and a very low cost debt, and our strong balance sheet ensures that the group is well placed to grow profitably to 225 million passengers planned by FY 2026. We now turn to a brief review of the H1 business. We had very strong traffic recovery, as I said, 115% of pre-COVID. Strong peak summer fares, they were up over 14% on Q2. Fares were up 14% over the pre-COVID.
Ancillary revenue delivered a solid performance with spend increasing to 23 EUR per passenger. The number I'm most proud of, however, is that our cost per passenger ex-fuel fell below 30 EUR in H1, at a time when every other competitor airline has shown dramatic cost increases. We're well-hedged on fuel for the remainder of this year, and today we're announcing that we're 50% hedged for next year at FY 2024 at about $93 per barrel. Forex is also well hedged, and more importantly, our Boeing CapEx, our Boeing order book out to FY 2026 is incredibly well hedged at about $1.24 to the euro, which means we're buying our aircraft at significantly lower euro prices than any of our competitors. The balance sheet remains strong.
Net debt at 13th September has fallen to EUR 0.5 billion from EUR 1.45 billion at the 31st of March. That's despite over EUR 900 million in CapEx. As I said, the group's fleet of 737s are owned. Over 90% are unencumbered, and I think this will be a key competitive advantage for Ryanair in the coming years, particularly as many of our competitors who entered or have exited COVID with a huge proportion of their fleet now on operating leases and exposed to rising interest rates. Our focus, however, in the balance sheet for the next year or 18 months is the repayment of EUR 1.6 billion of maturing bonds, while returning our balance sheet to a net zero debt position, hopefully by FY 2024.
I wanna touch briefly on the, I think the overblown, concerns about the impact of recession and rising consumer price inflation on Ryanair's business model. We believe they've been exaggerated. We have gone through previous recessions. We've gone through periods of high consumer price inflation. What we have found in all cases, like other price leaders, IKEA, Lidl, Aldi, people don't stop flying during recessions, but they become much more price-sensitive. As we saw during the Gulf War and 9/11 and all of the financial crash in 2007, 2008, Ryanair grows more strongly in a recession because we have a huge cost advantage over our competitors. That cost advantage is widening and people becoming more price sensitive turn to us.
I think you've already seen that over the last 12 months in the remarkable growth in our market shares. As our H1 traffic and the market share growth shows, millions of passengers are switching to flying Ryanair, and we expect that will continue. In terms of outlook, the recovery for the remainder of 2023 remains fragile. While forward bookings into the third quarter are strong, particularly with the October midterms and Christmas, we have very little visibility into Q4, and Q4 this year doesn't have Easter in it. I remain concerned as we, from the painful experience of last year, any guidance we give in the second half of the year will be subject to the possibility of adverse developments on COVID. We saw the Omicron situation last November crash Christmas and adverse or untoward developments in Ukraine.
The invasion of Ukraine at the end of February last year devastated Easter, which fell into Q1 of this year. However, while we remain dependent on Boeing meeting their delivery commitments, particularly at Christmas where we had planned extras for Christmas and the midterm, we are modestly raising our FY 2023 traffic guidance to 168 million passengers this morning. That's up slightly from a previous guidance of 166.5 million, and up 13% on our pre-COVID traffic. We remain hopeful that the full year fares will remain ahead of FY 2020, that is the pre-COVID figures, by a mid- to high-single-digit %, but we remain cautious that yields could be impacted at very short notice in the second half, as they were last year by Omicron and the Ukraine invasion.
If we're fortunate to avoid such negative events, then thanks to our strong traffic recovery, our advantageous fuel and currency hedges, and our widening cost and market share leadership over competitors, we're hopeful that we'll be able to minimize winter losses, which would enable us to deliver an FY 2023 profit after tax pre-exceptionals in a range of between EUR 1 billion-EUR 1.2 billion to March 2023. However, this cautious guidance remains hugely dependent on not suffering adverse events this winter as we did last year with Omicron and Ukraine. Neil, you want to take us through the slide presentation?
Well, thank you, Michael. Good morning, everybody. We'll just run quickly through the half year results presentation. As we all know, Ryanair has the lowest fares and the lowest costs of any airline in Europe. We're number one for traffic, and we'll grow to 168 million customers this year, which is 13% ahead of pre-COVID, as Michael already said. We're number one for customer service and indeed offer industry-leading reliability. We've strong environmental credentials with a B rating from CDP, and we were recently ranked the number one EU airline for ESG by Sustainalytics, which we're very proud of. Our balance sheet is triple B-rated by Fitch and S&P, and it's this financial strength and our lowest cost that makes us the long-term winner.
We're number one for coverage and choice, and we've a strong platform in place which will enable us to grow to 225 million passengers per annum by FY 2026. This slide is particularly important. It highlights the great strides we've made in relation to reducing our costs over the past two years. As you can see in the first half, our unit cost ex-fuel dropped below EUR 30. At the same time, the cost gap between us and all of our competitors has widened. They've all seen increases in their cost per passenger ex-fuel. I think this is gonna be a recurring trend over future quarters as we move ahead and Ryanair's leadership increases on this front.
On the quarter itself, I'm gonna do the comparison against last year, although as you can see, we have strong improvements against our pre-COVID FY20. Traffic rebounded strongly from 39 million passengers last year to 95 million passengers in the first half, a 143% increase. That was at a very respectable 94% load factor. We saw revenues up over 200% to EUR 6.6 billion. Unit costs and costs within the business performed strongly, 126% increase, well below the 143% increase in traffic. That, of course, includes an over 200% increase in our fuel bill.
As a result of that, we posted a very healthy EUR 1.37 billion net profit, and an earnings per share of EUR 1.11. Our balance sheet saw a strong recovery in our net debt, which dropped from EUR 1.45 billion to just over EUR 0.5 billion at the end of the half. It's this balance sheet strength that again differentiates Ryanair from everybody else. We've got a solid BBB rating from Fitch and S&P, which gives us access to hedge lines, gives us access to cheap financing in the market. The vast majority of our fleet, our 737 fleet, is owned, nearly all of it, and 90% of that is unencumbered.
As Michael already said, that means that in a rising interest rate environment where lease rate factors are going up, we've got a huge advantage over everybody else. We finished the quarter with very strong liquidity of EUR 4.6 billion cash. As I have already said, we saw our net debt drop to just over half a billion EUR from EUR 1.45 billion, despite the fact that we spent over EUR 900 million on CapEx. We continue to generate lots of cash in the business, and we've got plenty of plans for that over the next 18 months or so. We've to pay back EUR 1.6 billion in bonds between next March and August, and we're in peak CapEx for the next two years.
That said, our objective is to continue to manage the balance sheet down to a net debt position by hopefully March 2024. With that, Michael, I might ask you to run through current developments, please.
Thanks, Neil. Well done. Current developments. I caution that all of the commentary this morning, we remain concerned that the risk of COVID, Ukraine, and recession will overhang the winter schedule. However, there's no doubt that our summer 2022 reliability is driving robust demand for traffic and fare growth into the third quarter. That's allowed us to bring forward the pay restoration for over 90% of our pilots and cabin crew from the 1st of April 2023 to the 1st of December 2022, meaning they're gonna see that pay bump in the Christmas payroll. We've extended airport and pay deals out to the medium term, typically 2026, 2027. We have our fuel, US dollar, carbon is well hedged.
We expect to get 51 deliveries of the Gamechanger aircraft from Boeing, hopefully pre-summer 2023, but there's a degree of uncertainty whether we get the last five or 10 of those aircraft. I think it's that combination of lower ex-fuel costs that enables us to aggressively pursue our growth objectives to carry 225 million passengers per annum by FY26. For 2023, we're pleased this morning to return to a cautious guidance for a full-year out-turn of between EUR 1.0 billion-EUR 1.2 billion, subject to there being no adverse developments on COVID and Ukraine. Here's a chart that shows during the summer, Ryanair canceled the fewest flights of any airline in Europe, mainly because we'd taken the brave decisions to crew up well in advance of summer 2022.
We had a choice during Omicron or during the Ukraine invasion to cut that training, to cut those jobs. We didn't. We knew there would be a recovery, and we kept going with the recruitment and training, which meant we, unusually among most European airlines, suffered no staff disruptions during the past summer. That's caused us to make remarkable market share gains. In Italy, we've seen 14 points of share gain to over 40%. Hungary, the home market of one of our principal competitors, 13% market share gain to over 30%. Poland, Ireland, Belgium, across Europe, we're seeing remarkable market share gains, and we have no intention of giving back that market share.
In fact, we're gonna continue those gains because of the huge cost advantage that we have established over and widening cost advantage over our competitors as we emerge out of COVID. As our competitors cut capacity both this summer and into this winter, we're going to continue to grow. We are cautiously trimming some of our. We grew in the second quarter at 115% to pre-COVID. We're trimming that back to about 110% in the winter period. That is both aggressive growth during the weekends, but cutting it back to probably somewhere at close to pre-COVID capacities in midweek schedules. As you can see, with a much larger traffic base of 168 million passengers, we are going to grow by 10% this winter.
Most of our major competitors across Europe are still operating at significantly less than their pre-COVID capacity this winter, meaning we're going to continue to take market share from them. We are seeing robust Q3 demand. We think that's partly a reward for our reliability this summer. Also it's the emergence of this recessionary fears leading passengers to be more price sensitive. As our competitors are significantly increasing their airfares and cutting their capacity, they are driving that traffic and that capacity in our direction. We've very strong October midterm and Christmas bookings, as long as they're not disrupted by COVID or untoward developments in Ukraine. We've very limited visibility into Q4 with no Easter in Q4 as well. There is that fragility and that caution again. However, Ryanair's lower costs will enable us to thrive in a recession.
We are trimming some of the winter capacity. It's 110% compared to 115% in S22. We're very proud of the pay restoration which we've accelerated to December, and I think it vindicates the agreements we reached with the unions during COVID, bringing that pay restoration forward as we said we would. As soon as our business recovers from pre-COVID, the first thing we'll do is return that, restore those pay cuts. We're doing it a little bit early, and we run the risk that we might still have untoward developments in Ukraine or with COVID, but I think it's important that we reward our people first. We are hopeful that we'll get those 51 Gamechanger aircraft which will take us up to 124 units for peak summer 2023.
We are better positioned in Ryanair to thrive in a recession than any other airline in Europe. We've thrived in past recessions. Many of our competitors have never been through a recession in Europe. Consumers do switch to the lowest cost provider, and that is Ryanair in every market across Europe. As you can see, most of our competitors are either cutting capacity or have failed, which is again cementing our market share growth. We've covered our airport costs, our labor in medium term, medium to long-term agreements. New aircraft deliveries allow us to carry more passengers at lower capital and OpEx costs, which is why we think it's key that we operate 124 Gamechangers into summer 2023. Here's our traffic growth.
We're already stepping up this year's traffic figures to 168 million from 166 million. We think even if Boeing leave us slightly short of aircraft, we've a reasonable chance of getting to 185 million passengers next year. In summary, this year we'll deliver 168 million passengers. That's up 13% on pre-COVID. No other airline in Europe is delivering that type of traffic growth. We've seen a very strong forward bookings into Q3, mid-teens for Christmas. The fragility remains, and again, I think we should be cautious about COVID and Ukraine. I'd be less cautious about recession because I think Ryanair will do better in a recession than any other airline in Europe. We are restoring guidance for FY 2023.
We think we'll be somewhere between a range of EUR 1 billion-EUR 1.2 billion, which means we're looking at losses this winter of something of the order of up to EUR 200 million. We are delivering faster growth than in pre-COVID. We're on track to carry 225 million by FY 2026, and we don't need any additional aircraft. The existing orders with Boeing take us to that traffic figure. We have a very strong balance sheet with very low debt, owning all of our aircraft, not exposed to increased interest rates, and that financial strength and our lowest costs ensures that Ryanair will continue to be the long-term winner. Now we'll do Q&A.
Let's discuss Ryanair's ESG performance. What are the H1 highlights?
There's lots of highlights in the first half of the year. I suppose I'm very proud of the fact that we've 77 game-changers at the end of September. You remember these aircraft are 4% more passengers, yet burn 16% less fuel and have 40% less noise. We're also investing heavily in sustainable aviation fuels. We're into our second year with the Trinity partnership in relation to research in sustainable aviation fuel. Earlier this year we entered an agreement with Neste in Amsterdam to pick up SAF, and indeed, we've now announced an agreement to buy up to 160,000 tons of SAF from OMV. This will be across our Austrian, German, and Central Eastern European airports.
In June, we signed a commitments letter for SBTI, the Science Based Targets initiative, which sets out our plan to net carbon zero by 2050. We look forward to going through those plans with SBTI over the next number of months and years. Of course, you know, carbon reduction at the center of what we do, and we've agreed now to retrofit our 409 737NGs with Scimitar winglets. This is a $200 million investment, which will save approximately 1.5% fuel, and we will kick off that retrofit program this winter. You know, in recognition of everything that we've done, we've seen Sustainalytics now rank Ryanair the number one airline in Europe for ESG, and we're very proud of that fact.
Why is Ryanair restoring crew pay early?
Well, because we said we would, and it was part of our negotiated long-term agreements with our unions, that we said as the business recovered to pre-COVID traffic and profitability, we would fully restore pay. We'd already brought the full pay restoration for 90% of our crews forward from FY 2020, from April 2025 to April 2023. I think this morning's strong H1 results means we're able to bring that forward for the 90% of our pilots and cabin crew who are covered by those pay agreements to the first of December, meaning all of our pilots and cabin crew will see that bump in pay in the Christmas payroll.
We've also written out to the tiny number of unions who have still not concluded those pay restoration agreements, most notably the Belgian pilots and the Irish pilots, and have invited them to return to sensible negotiations which would allow our Irish pilots and our Belgian pilots to see their pay restored, this side of Christmas as well. We hope they'll take up that invitation.
How are staffing levels, and how is recruitment going?
Well, as Michael just said, you know, we were fully crewed this summer. We took the decision to keep everybody current. Indeed, we're well crewed into the balance of the remainder of this year. We've started the process of recruiting up now for an additional 51 game-changers for the summer of 2023 and beyond.
What is Ryanair's job creation plan for the next few years?
Well, we hope to create up to 6,000 new well-paid jobs, primarily for aviation professionals, pilots, cabin crew, engineers, as we grow the fleet and grow the traffic to 225 million passengers by FY 2026. We're already focusing on bringing through pilot cadets, engineering apprentices, and cabin crew. We've over 1,000 pilot cadets going through training at the moment. We're investing EUR 100 million in two new high-skill aviation training centers mirroring the one we've recently opened in Dublin. We expect to open one in the Iberian Peninsula and in Central and Eastern Europe over the next two years, so that we can recruit and train skilled pilots, cabin crew, and engineers locally.
In addition, we're also hiring people for our new maintenance hangar facilities in Malta and Kaunas and in Shannon as we continue to control the quality of our aircraft maintenance in-house.
Why was Ryanair's Summer 2022 operational performance and reliability so much better than other European airlines?
Again, it goes back to what we said about taking the bold decisions at the start of COVID, to retain jobs, keep our crews, keep our aircraft current, and indeed, to get ahead of the recruitment curve for the additional 737 Gamechangers that we operated this summer. We come into summer 2022 fully crewed. We were able to operate 115% of pre-COVID capacity, and we were flying over 3,000 flights a day. This was despite unprecedented ATC disruptions and security queues back in Q1. We had very, very limited impact on our actual schedules. On time was slightly impacted, but not cancellations.
Did you experience an increase in disruption costs in H1 due to ATC delays?
We did. In H1, I think the most notable disruptions we had were airport security disruptions in the June quarter. Thankfully, most of the airports at which we operate, at Stansted, Dublin, managed to recover strongly and quickly. We don't understand why some airports such as Schiphol and Heathrow are still complaining about not being able to staff up to handle the volume of flights. We also suffered some increase in flight delays and some flight cancellations due to extraordinary ATC delays across Europe this summer, and some national strikes in Italy, France, and Spain. However, we're pleased to report this morning a significant reduction in disruption costs compared to pre-COVID.
That, again, is a testament to the fact that we planned and recruited well for the summer of 2022, and we executed with industry-leading reliability through the peak summer period.
Ryanair operated 115% of pre-COVID capacity in Summer 2022. Where did you grow?
We've been growing all across Europe, but I suppose some of the standouts would be the likes of the Italian market, where we've grown from over 30% to over 40% in Summer 2022. We outstripped Wizz in their backyard in Budapest in Hungary this summer. We're now a very strong number two in Vienna, where we've seen huge capacity come out of that market, and we only see more opportunities there. In Ireland, we operated our largest ever schedule with over 30 aircraft this summer. Buzz, our Polish operation is now significantly larger than LOT, and we continue to grow in places like Portugal, Spain, and elsewhere. Indeed, it's not just the summer.
Into the winter, we're gonna operate 110% of pre-COVID capacity and continue to grow across Europe, and we're ramping up for another 51 game changers in the fleet next summer. We'll continue to see our traffic grow, hopefully up towards 185 million.
How will Ryanair achieve its accelerated 225 million passengers per annum target by FY 2026?
Well, we have approximately 190 additional game changer aircraft to take delivery of, as long as Boeing can deliver them on time. We are seeing dramatic growth in our market shares across most European countries. We have more airport growth opportunities than we have aircraft at the moment. Our new routes team is doing a tremendous job at extending both COVID recovery traffic agreements, and growth agreements with airports, all of whom are seeking to replace the traffic they've lost from our competitor airlines.
I think also we're seeing a very strong demand for Ryanair services across Europe, built on a combination of the reliability that we've delivered this summer and also the huge price advantage we have over competitor airlines and the huge cost advantage we have over competitor airlines as people become more price-sensitive into a recession, which I think will drive our growth for the coming years.
Would you consider M&A as part of your growth plans?
It's never really our first choice. You can't rule it out. We prefer to grow organically. That said, I think there will be significant consolidation and some airline failures over the next three to four years, and we'll probably play our part by giving traffic restoration and growth to airports all across Europe.
Do you have concerns about Boeing's ability to deliver aircraft ahead of peak summer 2023?
In a word, yes. Boeing have already notified us that instead of the 21 aircraft they'll deliver pre-Christmas, we'll be lucky to get 10 or 12. We hope to catch up some of that in the January or February of next year. At this point in time, we're not confident in their assurances that they'll deliver us the 51 aircraft by the end of May 2023, as they are contracted to. I think there's a risk that five or 10 of those aircraft will miss the summer peak. At this stage, we're planning, while we're recruiting and training for 51 additional aircraft, I think it's more likely that Boeing will leave us short, and we'll finish at maybe 40 or 45 additional aircraft for next summer.
Any update on discussions with Boeing about a follow-on MAX order?
No. As we all know, the discussions ceased in 2021 over pricing. When Boeing are more realistic in their pricing figures, then we'd be happy to have a conversation again. In the meantime, they continue to lose lots of customers. Most recently they've lost big Chinese orders. Jet2 have extended out now into the 2030s, meaning they probably won't be coming back as a Boeing customer anytime soon. They've lost Qantas. They've lost Air France, KLM. You know, in the next four or five years, we're gonna grow to 225 million customers.
We've got more than enough aircraft in our existing fleet and in our existing order book to get there, so we're under absolutely no pressure to have to do a deal, and you know, it'll be driven by price.
What are your thoughts on MAX 10 certification?
We think it's vital that the U.S. Congress gives Boeing a delay in the 31 December deadline for the MAX 10 certification. There's literally thousands of jobs across North America relying on that extension. We also think it's a critical safety issue. You know, we don't want to see two different cockpit types on the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft series. We want to see the same cockpits, and therefore, we think it's vital for aircraft and passenger safety that Congress gives Boeing the small extension we think would be necessary to get the MAX 10 aircraft certified, hopefully in the first half of 2023.
You recently extended Lauda's A320 leases. Are you planning for additional growth?
This was somewhat opportunistic. We had an opportunity to lock in 24 of the 29 A320s at significantly lower lease rates out to 2028. What it does give us is great operational resilience as we grow to 225 million customers over the next few years.
Ryanair reported a H1 FY 2023 PAT of EUR 1.37 billion pre-exceptionals. What drove this recovery?
Well, I think we had a very strong half one. Traffic, as you see, recovered strongly. We were operating at 115% of our pre-COVID traffic in a marketplace where most of our competitors were challenged and were canceling flights. We saw particularly strong Q2, and I've never in my years in this industry have we seen traffic growth of 15% and also accompanied by 14% increase in peak Q2 fares compared to pre-COVID pricing. That was pinned down slightly by the damage in Q1 initially that was caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so which again emphasizes how fragile the business is. Ancillary revenue, too, very, very solid performance. I think what really drove the profitability is that we contained the increase in operating costs.
We're only up 126%, despite a 200% increase in fuel. We were a major beneficiary of our fuel hedging and our dollar hedging. Cost per passenger ex-fuel has fallen below 30 EUR for the first time. Again, demonstrating Ryanair's ability to control costs as we grow, particularly in a marketplace where most of our competitors have already reported significant increases in their unit costs ex-fuel and their unit costs including fuel.
What gave rise to the exceptional loss in H1?
This was an unrealized loss on the mark to market of our jet fuel caps. You'll remember over the March quarter 2022 and the June quarter 2022 that we recorded about EUR 130 million unrealized gain on these. It's effectively a timing unwind as we start to use the caps.
What are the key drivers of ancillary revenue performance?
I think during the COVID period, we've seen more and more of our passengers select and switch to the priority boarding to reserve seating. We're also seeing a strong bump in in-flight sales, particularly now that we have duty-free back on board our aircraft on some 40% of our flights which touch to and from or operate to and from the UK, and we expect those trends to continue.
Fuel prices spiked post the Russian invasion of Ukraine. What is your current fuel hedging position?
We're very well hedged. I would think we're the industry leader in relation to hedging at the moment, both jet and currency. Over 80% hedged for FY 2023 at approximately $67 a barrel, and we've now extended our hedging out into FY 2024 with 50% cover in place at $93 a barrel. On currency, in relation to fuel this year, we're again over 80% hedged at 1.14 on the euro-dollar, and we've just under 20% hedged into next year at 1.08. I think this competitive advantage, and again, this is helped by the strong balance sheet and the credit lines that we have with the banks.
It gives us a huge advantage over everybody else into this winter and next year.
Is your aircraft CapEx hedged?
Yes. Our order book right out to FY 2026 is fully hedged at $1.24, that dollar rate of $1.24 to the euro. I think that's a testament to the work done by Neil and the finance team, the treasury team. We are in extraordinarily strong position with that kind of long-term dollar hedging, particularly on what is such a large CapEx program.
Let's turn to Ryanair's fortress balance sheet. Is net debt reducing?
Yeah. We saw a significant reduction in net debt over the first six months of this year. It dropped from EUR 1.45 billion to just over half a billion EUR, and that was despite EUR 900 million of CapEx in the first half of the year. As you said, it is a very strong balance sheet, triple B rated by Fitch and S&P. We own our 737s, and over 90% of them are unencumbered, which gives us a huge advantage over everybody else in a rising interest rate and rising lease rate factor environment.
We have strong liquidity of EUR 4.6 billion at the end of the half year, and we're gonna use this to help pay down EUR 1.6 billion of maturing bonds over the next year between March and August of next year. We would plan to get to broadly a net zero debt position by the end of FY 2024.
What is your CapEx guidance for FY 2023 and FY 2024?
Well, this FY 2023 is our peak CapEx year, approximately EUR 2.3 billion of aircraft and maintenance CapEx. Next year in FY 2024, again if Boeing meet their deliveries, we expect slightly lower CapEx of between EUR 2.1-EUR 2.2 billion. Some of that could move if Boeing deliveries are delayed, but we're in essentially now this, the next two years are our peak CapEx years. Again, I think the fact that we're in peak CapEx, we're generating very strong cash flows, and we're still able to pay down debt is a testament to the strength of the Ryanair balance sheet, but also the Ryanair business model and our ability to recover from seismic shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic.
How will you finance the maturing bonds and Boeing 737-8200 Gamechanger aircraft order?
We'll be somewhat opportunistic, but the working assumption at the moment is that we'll pay it from our own cash flows. Thanks to the strong balance sheet that we have, triple-B rated, we've got access to the bond markets. Our banks are usually underrepresented, both secured and unsecured. Leasing companies have very little exposure to Ryanair, would love to get more. As things stand, we plan to pay it out of cash.
Are there plans to distribute funds to shareholders in the near term?
Certainly not over the next 12 months. All of our efforts and our focus now is on paying down debt, retiring the EUR 1.6 billion in bonds that are due for repayment in 2023. I think that's very important at a time when interest rates are rising. Ryanair and our balance sheet is essentially insulated from rising interest rates, which will afflict both, I think, the lease rates and the borrowing rates for many of our competitors, and again, widen the cost advantage we have over every other airline in Europe.
Will an economic downturn or recession impact Ryanair this winter and into summer 2023?
No. Ryanair has traditionally done very well in economic slowdowns, whether it's 9/11, Gulf War, or most recently the global financial crisis. What typically happens is that people continue to travel. They don't stop, but they become more price conscious, and we're the lowest cost producer of a seat of any airline in Europe. So we would expect people to make the rational decision to fly with Ryanair. We are in a slightly different position this time around as well in that you know there's nearly full employment in Europe. Wages are rising. People have annual leave to use up. They also are sitting on massive savings from two years of lockdowns and in many instances working remotely which again feeds into the travel experience.
We believe we're in a very, very strong position. We've got very large market shares. We're growing with very competitively priced aircraft coming on board. We've got great certainty on multi-year agreements with our airports and labor. We feel we're very well placed to perform profitably and grow strongly in a recession.
Finally, what is the group's FY23 outlook?
Well, we raised our traffic target this morning to 168 million passengers. We are somewhat dependent on Boeing deliveries, Boeing meeting their deliveries over the next 12 months for the summer 2023, continuing that strong traffic growth. Q3 bookings and pricing look strong into the October midterm and Christmas. We have very little visibility on Q4, and that's why we continue to be cautious. There is still the risk of the overhang of negative COVID or Ukraine developments. We remain hopeful that for the full year, average airfares or our average yields will rise by a mid- to high-single-digit % over the pre-COVID figures. We continue to be the beneficiary of very strong fuel hedging, dollar hedging, and we're the beneficiary of a widening cost leadership over competitor airlines in Europe.
If there are no adverse events, we are restoring our full year guidance this morning in a range of EUR 1.1 billion-EUR 1.2 billion for the year to March 2023. That is therefore forecasting a loss of up to EUR 200 million in the second half of the year. Again, all of that is dependent on what is still a fragile recovery and one that could be derailed at very short notice by adverse COVID and Ukraine developments. Over the longer term, we see huge growth opportunities. We're adding aircraft at much lower costs that are carrying 4% more passengers, burns 16% less fuel, and therefore that itself gives us further operational cost advantages.
We see a very strong restoration of traffic growth rising to 225 million passengers by FY26, and we think profitability, given some kind of stable oil over that period of time, will see a very strong recovery as well. Ryanair will continue to lead Europe's aviation industry. We will continue to be, by some considerable distance, the lowest cost, the lowest fare airline in Europe. As others consolidate, I think we expect to see consolidation in Europe, Ryanair will continue to be the, I think the preeminent, if not the only low-fares airline in Europe, offering competition and choice to the high-fare connecting carriers for many years to come.
Michael, Neil, thank you.
Thank you very much.