Ryanair boss tells French holiday home owners to Buzz off

Ryanair, the low-cost Irish airline, threatened yesterday to scrap six of its underperforming routes unless there was a significant improvement in passenger numbers in the next two months.

The routes include at least one destination in France which Ryanair inherited through the takeover of its rival carrier Buzz earlier this year and three services from Stockholm's Skavska airport, which is owned by the UK airports operator TBI.

Michael O'Leary, Ryanair's chief executive, said the proportion of seats filled on the vulnerable routes was unacceptable at about 70 per cent and blamed some of the problems on the poor performance of the airport operators.

Apart from the three Scandanavian services, the other routes at risk are from Stansted to destinations in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Mr O'Leary was unrepentant about the possibility of closing down services used by Britons to reach holiday homes on the Continent. "Please don't ask me to feel sorry for rich people who have second homes in France. We don't have an obligation to go on carrying them to their destinations for ever and a day. If routes don't work, we won't hang around."

He was speaking as Ryanair unveiled an 11 per cent increase in pre-tax profits to €187.5m (£127.5m) for the half year to the end of September. Operating costs over the six-month period outstripped revenues for only the second time in Ryanair's history, as the airline incorporated Buzz and launched 50 new routes. But after-tax margins fell by only 3 points to 29 per cent.

Passenger numbers rose by 45 per cent to 11.3 million but load factors - the average proportion of seats filled on each flight - fell from 82 per cent to 77 per cent. Mr O'Leary said he expected yields to fall by a further 10-15 per cent this year as Ryanair continued to cut fares but forecast that profits would continue to grow "materially", with margins remaining in excess of 20 per cent.

Mr O'Leary said he remained confident of being vindicated by the European Commission, which is investigating the cut-price charges Ryanair pays at Belgium's Charleroi airport. But if Brussels did rule the subsidies amounted to illegal state aid then Ryanair would fight the case in the European Court of Justice. "We are not changing the cost base at Charleroi by 1 cent," he said.

Ryanair is also changing its policy of buying all its aircraft outright. In future a third of the fleet will be leased. Although the balance sheet remains strong with net cash of €1.16bn, Mr O'Leary said this would give Ryanair extra firepower should a competitor start a price war.