What does the future hold!
 

It puzzles me how Ryanair will be able to continue to grow profits for shareholders from here. Rising fuel costs have to hurt and surely they are tapped out on new routes across Europe. Do you see Ryanair ever developing a long-haul service, and how would that work with their low fare model?!!

I don't think they would ever develop a long-haul service. Even Wizz has grown much faster than FR in recent years heading to Abu Dhabi etc.

Fair point but surely Abu Dhabi could be considered long-haul? Yes, I know that's not the Far East or North America, but its still further than FR have flown before. Israel, the Middle East, the Emirates and North Africa should surely be on FR's longer term plans.

Look at fleet development and future deliveries, W6 is not growing faster.

Ok, I get fleet development but surely that's just restocking aircraft for the same routes flown. I'm talking about route expansion. They have to expand their routes and surely flying further will open up more routes.

Higher fares. Since other airlines are rising their fares as well, Ryanair can do it while still being the cheap option. Where it may hurt are the routes driven by the low fares, where a large number of people only flew somewhere because it was cheap. But again, the definition of cheap is changing so who knows.

In a way, I find the current market situation favouring Ryanair. As more people need to cut their costs, and while legacy carriers' fares are skyrocketing, there will be even more people favouring price over everything else, and Ryanair still holds the advantage of having a much better cost per seat, thus is able to offer better fares than the competition. Therefore, they may be able to compensate for the loss of some leisure demand, by being able to attract new customers on "essential journeys".

By the way, are aviation fuel prices still rising?

Fuel prices are 17.8% down compared to a year ago, 5.8% down compared to last week.

They already fly to Israel and North Africa.