Summary
- Ryanair has evolved from a single Irish airline to a group of five large airlines, including subsidiaries like Buzz and Malta Air.
- The Ryanair Group is Europe's largest airline and the world's third-largest, carrying over 160 million passengers in 2022.
- The fleet breakdown shows that Ryanair still operates the majority of the group's aircraft, but its subsidiaries are gradually gaining more market share.
Five years ago, Ryanair was a single Irish airline operating flights across Europe. A lot has changed in the years since. Five airlines now fall under the Ryanair Group umbrella, ranging from Buzz and its bumble bee-based livery to Lauda, the only group entity with some Airbus A320 family aircraft. Here's the story of how one huge airline became five large airlines.
Based on 2022 passenger numbers, Ryanair is Europe’s largest airline and the world’s third-largest airline. In 2022, the airline carried 160.44 million passengers on its thousands of daily flights across Europe and beyond. While every Ryanair group flight operates under a Ryanair flight number, the Irish LCC is increasingly diversifying its operations being undertaken across its group airlines.
Five group airlines
These days, the Ryanair Group is made up of five component airlines. Somewhat confusingly, the leading airline in the group is also called Ryanair and is the original airline that existed before being split into subsidiaries. This split started in November 2018. Ryanair was joined by ‘Ryanair Sun’. This was a Polish airline designed to cut operating costs. It has since been rebranded as Buzz and sports a yellow/grey bee livery on some of its aircraft.
In March 2019, the second subsidiary was formed. As an Irish airline, Ryanair is also a European Union airline. However, the airline's largest base has historically been at London Stansted Airport in the United Kingdom. Anticipating possible issues post-Brexit, the airline sought to launch a UK subsidiary called Ryanair UK. In December 2018, a Boeing 737-800 was registered on the UK registry as G-RUKA.
August 2019 saw the creation of the airline's largest subsidiary to date. Known as Malta Air, the airline has bases across Europe and has slowly taken market share from the main Ryanair brand. The final airline was bought by Ryanair rather than created as an offshoot of the low-cost carrier. Laudamotion began operating Ryanair flights in late 2019, according to schedule data from aviation data experts Cirium. It was acquired with Airbus A320s in its fleet, which remain to this day.
What does the data show?
The addition of the new subsidiaries naturally meant that the number of flights being operated by the core Ryanair airline began to fall. However, combined, the airline is operating more flights year on year as the Ryanair Group continues to grow to new heights. Most recently, the airline operated more than 100,000 flights for the first time in a month during July.
Malta Air and Buzz have slowly grown their proportion of operations across the Ryanair Group network. According to 2022 schedule data, the airlines had the following scheduled flights,
Airline |
Scheduled Flights (2022) |
Percentage |
---|---|---|
Ryanair |
565,157 |
61.62% |
Malta Air |
237,955 |
25.94% |
Buzz |
97,746 |
10.66% |
Ryanair UK |
11,798 |
1.28% |
Lauda Europe |
4,546 |
0.50% |
Total |
917,202 |
The vast majority of the Ryanair Group flights are operated by Ryanair, Buzz, or Malta Air. From the graph below (which only shows the big three), you can see that the breakdown between the airlines is pretty constant, apart from a blip from June-August 2022 when Ryanair operated a large number of Malta Air flights (including all in July, according to the data).
Let’s look at July 2023 as a snapshot. This was the first month that the Ryanair Group operated more than 100,000 flights (Spoiler: it is set to beat this record again in August). In total, 100,844 flights were scheduled across the group in June (Ryanair’s official data shows that it operated 101,272 flights).
Airline |
Scheduled Flights (July 2023) |
Percentage |
---|---|---|
Ryanair |
51,878 |
51.44% |
Malta Air |
31,080 |
30.82% |
Buzz |
10,331 |
10.24% |
Ryanair UK |
2,434 |
2.41% |
Lauda Europe |
5,121 |
5.09% |
Total |
100,844 |
Ryanair Sun Buzz
Now we’ll take a look at the airline's different subsidiaries in order of launch. This means that we are starting with Ryanair Sun, which was the first to begin operating flights. The airline initially began operating charter flights in April 2018. In mid-to-late 2018, Ryanair announced that it would be closing its Polish bases and transferring operations in the country completely to Ryanair Sun.
In March 2019, Ryanair revealed that Ryanair Sun was getting a rebrand to distinguish itself from the main Ryanair brand further. The airline now operates as Buzz. While all the Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft still wear the old Ryanair livery, some of the group’s Boeing 737 MAX 8200 aircraft have the Buzz livery, complete with bee cartoons on the winglets. Ryanair purchased the Buzz brand in 2003 for around €20 million.
According to data from ch-aviation.com, the airline today has a 64-strong fleet of 50 Boeing 737-800 aircraft, accompanied by 13 Boeing 737 MAX 9200s. Interestingly, the Ryanair Group’s only Boeing 737-700 (formerly registered EI-SEV) was transferred to Buzz in April and is now registered as SP-RUM.
The Boeing 737-700 is 24.6 years old, which means that despite the arrival of new MAX aircraft, the fleet's average age has risen from 3 years in March 2022 to 11.3 years. The airline has bases in Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Czechia, Latvia, Bulgaria and Austria. Its primary base is Warsaw's Modlin Airport.
Ryanair UK
With the uncertainty of Brexit weighing on Ryanair's mind, the airline decided to establish a presence in the UK just in case it was necessary to continue operations once the big day came. The airline group founded Ryanair UK in 2017, with the airline's first aircraft, G-RUKA, joining the UK aircraft register on December 20th, 2018.
While just two Boeing 737-800s were registered with the airline in July 2021, this has since grown to 13 planes registered as G-RUKA through G-RUKM. These jets are all from the Boeing 737-800 family with no MAXs yet bound for the UK subsidiary. While London Stansted is Ryanair UK's primary base, it also operates out of Manchester (MAN) and Edinburgh (EDI).
Malta Air
Malta Air was founded in 2019 through an agreement between the Maltese government and Ryanair. Initially, ten aircraft were to join the Malta Air fleet, based out of Malta's Luqa International Airport (MLA). The airline has flourished in the two years since. Today, it has 125 Boeing 737-800 aircraft, along with 36 Boeing 737 MAXs, giving a total of 161 planes.
The airline's fleet has an average age of 4.6 years and a total capacity of 30,717 passengers simultaneously. The airline has bases across Europe, including 5 in Germany, where it is arguing against rising airport fees.
Lauda Europe
Lauda Europe, founded as Laudamotion, commenced flights in March 2018 when Ryanair revealed it would acquire 24.9% of the airline before later growing it to 75%. The investment marked a departure from Ryanair's typical model, as it meant the airline would have some Airbus A320 family aircraft under its care.
In January 2019, Simple Flying reported that Ryanair had taken over 100% of the airline. There had been plans to add bases. However, the pandemic got in the way. According to data from ch-aviation.com, the Lauda that Ryanair had purchased was replaced with Lauda Europe, which was founded in 2020. The airline has 28 A320-200 aircraft, with an average age of 16.4 years and a capacity of 5,040. Lauda Europe is also based in Malta from a business perspective, but its aircraft are based at London Stansted Airpot (STN), Palma de Mallorca (PMI), Vienna (VIE), Zadar (ZAD), and Zagreb (ZAG).
How does the fleet break down?
Ryanair still operates most of the group’s fleet, accounting for 52.7% of the total fleet with 296 aircraft. Of course, the majority of its subsidiaries' fleets also contain aircraft in the Ryanair colors. This is gradually changing as the individual liveries finally make it onto the new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft being delivered. Aircraft aren't being repainted because this costs money that Ryanair doesn't want to waste. Meanwhile, new aircraft need to be painted anyway, so it makes no difference which livery they end up with.
How many of Ryanair's subsidiaries have you flown on? Let us know what you think and why in the comments below!
Sources: ch-aviation, Cirium