Ryanair is planning for its busiest ever summer season despite the threat of the crisis in the Middle East.
The airline says it plans to operate more than 3,800 flights daily.
There are concerns about the amount of jet fuel available in Europe as a consequence of the Middle East conflict. But Ryanair insists that it is well placed to weather the storm.
“We have good eyes on our fuel situation out till the end of June, which is quite normal for where we’d have been this time last year as well”, says Conor Gillardy, Deputy Director of Flight Operations Control at Ryanair.
“Only about 30 percent of the fuel for us in Europe is coming through the Middle East and our fuel providers have been extremely agile in…moving their feed of fuel from the Middle East out to Africa, out to North America as well, where there are also fuel pipelines”, he said speaking at an event organised by the European air traffic management organisation, Eurocontrol.
“We’ll continue to monitor the situation, but our providers are saying the right things and we’re quite confident on where that will go.”
Ryanair is now the largest airline in Europe based on annual passengers, fleet size, as well as number of flights. The airline is headquartered in Dublin. All of its flights are within the wider European region.
Last month, the International Energy Agency warned that Europe has “maybe six weeks or so [of] jet fuel left”.
The German airline, Lufthansa, is one of several airlines to announce that it is cancelling thousands of flights this summer.
But the European Commission insists Europe currently has sufficient supplies.
European airlines raising prices and cancelling routes is “due to the high prices of the fuels rather than a shortage of jet fuels”, said the European Commission’s Transport Spokesperson, Anna-Kaisa Itkonen.
A senior EU official said that only around 20 percent of Europe’s jet fuel usually transited through the Strait of Hormuz.