The week of 9 January was the strongest sales period for Ryanair Group in the company's history, as bookings for Easter and the summer surged early in the new year, chief executive Michael O'Leary has indicated. Over 2 million bookings were made over the weekend, up from a previous 2019-era record of 1.6 million sales. In total, the airline tallied 4.95 million ticket sales during the whole week, up from a previous record of 4.12 million. Each day from Monday through Thursday set a new daily record. "There seems to be very high demand," O'Leary observed during a press event in London on 17 January, adding that bookings were coming in despite robust pricing and a lack of promotional offers by the airline, in contrast with previous bumper periods. "Yes, there's lot of cheap seats out there, but [strong bookings] are not on the back of a seat sale… There just seems to be very strong demand." O'Leary believes there is the potential for this week's sales number to surpass 5 million for the first time ever. He attributes the trend to customers booking early in the expectation that prices will rise, with other indicators, such as hotel and accommodation sales, showing a corresponding surge in interest. It also demonstrates that consumers are shrugging off the risk of recession and the cost-of-living crisis. Ryanair is seeing "no sign" of wider economic problems filtering through. An ongoing problem facing the carrier currently is a lack of capacity, constrained by a shortage of aircraft given production delays at Boeing. Ryanair was supposed to receive 21 Boeing 737 Max jets from September through December, but only got 12. It was then due to receive a further 39 from January to end-April, and expects to receive 30-35 by end-May, after which date it refuses to take deliveries because it is busy with operations. "To be fair to Boeing. the production does seem to have ramped up," says O'Leary. These expected deliveries would still put the airline "well on track" to achieve its goal of reaching 225 million passengers by fully year 2026. O'Leary sees the current European airline market as marked by a lack of overall capacity, with many carriers, especially legacy airlines, having pulled aircraft from the market amid the pandemic that have not been, and may not for some time be, replaced. "There is still a remarkably restrained capacity particularly across short-haul Europe," he says, arguing that the only airline that has placed meaningful extra capacity into the sector is Ryanair, which is offering 110% of its pre-Covid capacity in the quarter to end-March. Yet O'Leary is careful to caution that bumper sales and restricted capacity may not translate into stellar profitability for the carrier, with high oil prices impacting its bottom line. He explains that the challenge facing the carrier, which is roughly 50% hedged for full year 2024, is that a rise in oil prices could increase its cost base on its unhedged requirements, while a decline could enable those relatively unhedged airlines to undercut it on pricing. Given this uncertainty, O'Leary comments only that there is a "realistic prospect of very strong passenger volumes and rising airfares" through 2023, unless the carrier is extremely lucky. "If we have a year of strong demand, slightly higher fares, if oil prices stay stable or fall, and we have no adverse impacts in Covid or Ukraine," he says, "we'll make a bundle of money this year."

The Russia-Ukraine crisis will have “long lasting impacts” on lessors’ decisions about where to place their assets in the future, the president of Carlyle Aviation Partners has said. Robert Korn, speaking on 17 January at the Airline Economics Growth Frontiers Dublin conference, says the war “really casts a shadow on where we should be deploying our assets and where we should be thinking of investing our capital that we manage, primarily for large institutions for pensions and endowments”. He adds that lessors are “going to be questioned about where they are deploying assets”. Korn has seen “significant changes” to both the terms and price of aircraft insurance policies as a result of the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Carlyle launched legal action against its insurers in a Miami court at the end of October and also began legal action in the UK in early January. Referring to the ongoing conflict, Korn says: “We don’t know when this will end; we just know it will end at some point. The end of active hostilities and the recovery of trade and relationships are two very different dates in the future, and it’s going to take quite a long time for financiers, for lessors to truly feel comfortable returning to many of these places.” He adds: “In saying that, we’re also being forced to look at countries that border those regions and try and pick and choose today which we feel comfortable and not comfortable putting aircraft in.”

Asiana Airlines has completed restoration of all seven cargo aircraft back to passenger aircraft in line with the recent recovery in demand for international flights. The aircraft, which include four A350s and three A330s, were used exclusively for cargo during the Covid-19 period and put into operation more than 500 times per remodelled aircraft, the South Korean carrier says. On 16 January, Asiana Airlines completed the restoration work on the last remodelled freighter, an A330, to its original state by installing 260 economy seats. The aircraft will be used on Southeast Asia and Japan routes. The company was able to transport a total of 70,000t of cargo after remodelling its first cargo aircraft, achieving approximately W370 billion ($300 million) in additional sales. In particular, the remodelled freighter was actively used on routes to the Americas where demand for cargo transportation is high, recording additional sales of about W300 billion, it adds.