Ryanair Reorganizes Exec Team as It Falls to Loss
Photo Credit: A Ryanair jet at East Midlands airport in the UK. The airline slipped to a quarterly loss. Flickr / James
Skift Take
If it's tough for Ryanair, you can imagine how difficult it is for other smaller airlines. With a new group structure, it will be interesting to see how big a part the Irish carrier plays in any consolidation over the course of 2019.
Ryanair will change its executive management structure with CEO Michael O'Leary relinquishing day-to-day control of its main Irish airline as it looks to create new cost efficiencies in what is becoming an increasingly tough aviation market.
The move, announced Monday, came on the same day the company slipped to a quarterly loss for the first time since 2014. The carrier made a pre-tax loss in the three months to the end of December of $95.7 million (€83.6 million,) compared with a profit of $129.3 million (€112.9 million) in the prior year.
A significant amount of this loss was down to start-up costs associated with Laudamotion, the Austrian-based airline it recently took 100 percent control of. Without this, Ryanair's pre-tax loss was $25.3 million (€22.1 million.) Revenue (excluding Laudamotion) rose 9 percent to $
