Ryanair is leasing six aircraft on short-term contracts this year, including two Airbus A320s, in order to cater for increased passenger demand.
Finance chief Neil Sorahan tells Flightglobal the carrier is taking aircraft from a "number of different parties" – including Air Contractors, Air Explore and Smartlynx Airlines – because it needs the capacity to handle a 4% rise in passenger bookings for the summer.
Five aircraft will be leased for the most of the summer, with a sixth to be added for July and August, before all of them are returned in September.
Ryanair leased seven aircraft last year and Sorahan says he hopes the deliveries of new Boeing 737-800s means the airline will not need to lease additional aircraft in 2016.
"It is not cheap. As a CFO, I am looking forward to next year, when we are fully self-sufficient. We have got a lot of aircraft delivered this year; we only had 11 aircraft delivered last year," he says, adding: "Whereas [we are now] starting to ramp up the Boeing order."
Source: Cirium Dashboard
