Has Ryanair reached its zenith or does O'Leary have doubt about that the ExMax is the future

He recently announced that he had plenty of time before any further 737 orders where forthcoming saying that another world shock disruption would have to come first so he could again get preferential pricing.

The ExMax was never such a gamechanger that Ryanair has been spreading about. 10% more seats than the 737-800 and slightly more effective engines do not give enough green credentials that it impresses any politician when everybody is dreaming about electric planes. And for Ryanair shareholders its just a few percentage points more potential profit for an increasingly short timeframe until something more drastically have to happen about the future of flying. Unless transport of people by air is to go into a permanent decline at the hands of the climate change brigade.

It could also be that Ryanair has reached the long touted optimum sice of aircrafts, round 200. They are dividing into not only more marketing names but operations to. Or that the current top management have run out of steam, entusiasm and ideas after 25 years at the helm. And that goes for Wilson to. 

Comeback from CoVid19 is neither so fast as they had hoped and they might start to suspect that government restrictions is not going to be the problem in the next couple of years rather than the general publics lingering fear. As I have said before the 25 to 40% of the populous that don't care about danger and travels anyway are not going to be enough to fill the Ryanair fleet to above 90% capacity.

It's very doubtfull O'Leary actually meant he was hoping for another downturn. Gaining an extra 10% discount on renewing lets say a quarter of the fleet = 100 planes, would take a long time to make up for a 9/11 or CoVid19 like 2 years of disruption. That kind of events are more to the advantage of upstarts and not the encumbent that Ryanair have become. One can't benefit from power by the hour contracts on planes one already owns.

More likely Ryanair have seen a more permanent disruption to its core markets. After Brexit they can now longer expect to fly several million eastern european workers to he UK. Or backwards and forwards for every holliday and family event. And if working from home becomes a permanent thing the tens of thousands long commuters to Ireland might not either come back in a major way. Holliday travels to the beach or the snow is not going to make up for that. And Wizz failed attempt on Norway will scare other low costs away from expanding much in the Nordic markets. 

That leaves Ryanair waiting for new trends to emerge hence we could see a reduction in its total fleet size in the coming years. Possibly leading to a permanent long drawn out decline, unless new brooms with new ideas come in at the very top.