Hello, and welcome to the Ryanair Q3 FY 2021 results conference call. Throughout the call, participants will be in listen mode only, and afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. During the Q&A, in the interest of time and fairness, please limit yourselves to one question per person. Just to remind you, this conference call is being recorded. Today, I am pleased to present Michael O'Leary, Ryanair Group CEO. Please go ahead with your meeting. Okay. Good morning, everyone. You're welcome to the Q3 results conference call. I'm here with Neil Sorahan, Eddie Wilson, among others. I don't propose to go through the press stuff in any great detail. It's on our website from seven o'clock this morning. A couple of quick points. As you'll see, in Q3, traffic was down effectively almost 80% to 8 million passengers. That was still significantly more traffic than any of our competitors carried during the period. We finished the quarter with EUR 3.5 billion on cash, and we've extended the Stansted low-cost deal for four years out to the end of 2028. We've also secured the easyJet slots for seven base aircraft at Stansted, and we expect to take all those up as soon as we're allowed to or the travel restrictions are removed. We continue to make significant progress on our environmental policies. We obtained the first-ever rating from CDP of B-, which makes us the highest-rated airline in the world. We are pleased with the timing and also the modest price discount of the Boeing MAX aircraft. We increased the order to 210 aircraft prior to Christmas. Fundamentally, remember, these aircraft will give us 4% more seats but lower our fuel consumption by 14% and will give us materially lower operating costs going forward for the next four or five years. Unlike many of our competitors, we continue to own over 90% of our fleet, most unencumbered. The key issue obviously that bedevils us in our industry for the next period of time remains COVID-19. The lockdowns and restrictions have been exacerbated into Q4, so out to the end of March. We expect another significant drop in traffic during that three-monthly period, probably down to something between 2 million and 2.5 million passengers. That will take our full-year traffic down to a number of between 26 million-30 million passengers. On the upside, however, we take great comfort from the stunning success of the U.K. vaccination program. The U.K. vaccinated 500,000 people on Saturday and on Sunday over the weekend. They are on target to vaccinate 50% of their entire population by the end of March, and certainly all the high-risk categories, everybody over 50, nursing homes, hospitals, et cetera. We think this is the way out of the COVID-19 crisis. Widespread and effective vaccination, particularly the high-risk groups, will remove the need for travel restrictions or lockdowns, particularly, I think, in Europe as we move into the summer. There's no doubt that Europe has fallen behind the U.K. Europe and Ireland, they need to get their finger out to catch up. I suspect that there will be more vaccines licensed between now and the end of March and a significant spike upwards in the production of vaccines. We still expect Europe to catch up and have vaccinated half its population by the end of June. Once all of those high-risk groups or the elderly are vaccinated, then we think there is a likelihood of a strong return of or a repeal of the travel restrictions, which will lead to a strong snapback, I think, in air travel and holidays, particularly in times of the school holidays this summer across Europe. 93% of the deaths to date from COVID-19 have been in the over 65-year category. Once that group is vaccinated in the U.K. and across the rest of Europe, we see a strong return to air travel this summer. Therefore, we're continuing to keep the pressure on, particularly in countries like Ireland, where the COVID continues to be mismanaged by the government and the National Health Service or the National Health Agency. They're continuing on a daily basis to kind of a diatribe of misery about cases and hospitalizations. They studiously avoid any daily mention of vaccinations. We want to know why they're not like the Danes, for example. The Danish government is announcing on a daily basis the number of people who were vaccinated that day, how many have received the first vaccine dose and the second vaccine dose. Ireland should be following a similar course. The only way out of this is not further lockdowns, as the WHO confirmed lockdowns will not get rid of coronavirus, nor will zero COVID, which is a [audio distortion] policy. Vaccinations is the way out of this. It's the way to significantly reduce both deaths, hospitalizations, and illness from COVID. We need an answer as to why our chief medical officer in Ireland at NPHET who have mismanaged almost every aspect of this crisis to date, is not on a daily basis. They're holding a daily press conference. They should be announcing the daily numbers of vaccinations because that's the only way you embarrass these civil servants into accelerating the vaccination program. Looking out into the next year, I know we'll get to it on the Q&A, please don't ask us for forecasts because we're not in a position to give you any. We have a wide range of traffic that could, at the low end, be 80 million passengers, at the upper end, 120 million passengers. We think that there will be a modest recovery in traffic into Q1. That's the April, May, June quarter. A lot of that depends, again, on what travel restrictions are removed by European governments once their populations of the high-risk populations become vaccinated. We think there will be a very substantial travel recovery into the July, August, September period. We're already seeing a significant spike upwards in bookings into that period for people taking the chance and also taking advantage of our no change fee policy, but taking a chance on making summer holiday bookings on flights, particularly to the sun destinations of Europe. We believe there will be a very strong recovery in short-haul European city break holidays, sun holidays, mainly because of capacity reductions, but also because the long haul will take much longer to recover. I think there will be a much slower rate of vaccination in the Southern Hemisphere. That will, I think, lead to still a very high risk to long-haul travel. Therefore, people will holiday much closer to home in Europe. Into the third quarter, which will be December quarter and the March quarter, we expect most, if not all of the European populations to have been vaccinated at that stage, or at least be down to the very youngest quartiles who are not at great risk of suffering illness or death from COVID. That by gradually as we move through 2021, the acceleration in the vaccine program, allowing for the various incompetences of national health services will remove restrictions and allow us to return to travel. When we do, we're returning with the benefit of the new Boeing 737 MAX, much lower operating costs thanks to the remarkably efficient engines, 4% more seats than a modest discount we negotiated with COVID on that. We're still waiting for the 8-200s to be certified by the FAA. We hope that will take place sometime in mid-February. EASA we hope will license the aircraft sometime around maybe early mid-March, and we will be in a position to take our first delivery towards the end of March. We're in very active negotiations with a whole series of airports across Europe who are looking to us to give them more aircraft, give them more routes and more traffic. We note the continuing developments among competitors, cutting capacity, closing bases. I think we had the wonderful example last week of Wizz, for example, closing the Trondheim base in Norway that they'd opened only six weeks previously as a further indication of that. We believe nobody will be able to compete with Ryanair's cost base or our operating efficiency once we return. We are spending money at the moment. I would highlight it again, keeping flying some aircraft to keep the aircraft current, to keep our pilots and cabin crew current. We're stepping up the recruitment of cabin crew, who will be the bottleneck to a rapid recovery this summer. We are training and recruiting many hundreds of cabin crew at the moment. We may have those on the payroll, or we certainly have them trained. Some will be on the payroll, some will be on furlough schemes. We need them trained and licensed to be able to fly in order to underpin our strong and rapid recovery through the summer of 2021 and into the autumn of 2021. Neil, that's all I have to say by way of introduction. Mark, anything you want to add on the MD&A or on the finances? Just a couple of small points. It was a difficult quarter. I was pleased with the performance in costs, which were down 63%. Ancillary also performed relatively well, up about 2% on a per passenger basis, driven by the priority boarding and the reserve seating. The balance sheet BBB rate is one of the strongest in the sector. As you said, Michael, the 80% of the Boeing fleet unencumbered at a conservative value of just over EUR 7 billion book value. We also finished the quarter with a strong cash balance of EUR 3.5 billion, and this was after more refunds and chargebacks going out over EUR 200 million in fuel swaps, some of the furloughs from the spring and the summer being paid. I thought a relatively good performance in the quarter given all of the headwinds that we had. Eddie, you might be used to this before we open up the Q&A. Do you want to give people a quick flavor of the tenor negotiations with airports and with the unions at the moment, how they've come along in recent months? Yeah, just on the staff costs, we continue to take advantage of the various payroll and furlough schemes. While we're recruiting cabin crew, we're mindful of some of those schemes don't allow recruitment onto the payrolls at the moment. It's just to balance those, but to try and have enough people ready that if we do have that snap back and pent-up demand. On the airports, we've the announcement today on the extension of the Stansted deal, our low-cost deal there for a further four years as 2028. We continue to work at our largest bases. Some are moving more quickly than others, but there is a gradual awakening that there's going to be less capacity. In the European market, some of the airports are hiding behind while we wait to see what happens. As we continue to make announcements, we've made announcements in Treviso, a new base in Beauvais up and running, extra aircraft in Naples. We're moving along at a steady pace, but it's going to take a while for some of those airports, and it may be too late for them. We're going to have to make decisions when we finalize the traffic for the summer, and there will be less capacity there. Those airports that step up to the plate will be rewarded. We are making good progress with airport costs. Good. Okay. Thanks, Eddie. All right. We'll open up for Q&A. Just a warning, if we can keep it as tight as we can because we're going on investor calls from 11 o'clock onwards. Thank you. If you wish to ask an audio question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing zero two to cancel. Once again, please press zero one on your telephone keypad if you wish to ask an audio question. Our first question comes from Daniel Roeska from Bernstein. Please go ahead. Morning, gentlemen. I'll limit myself to one then. Let's hope the question numbers go up as the profits increase again. Could you talk a bit about the state of your multi-brand approach? You removed the Lauda branded side. The flights are again displayed as Ryanair logos with an operated by tag, there's no sign really of Lauda, Buzz or Malta Air yet you're taking delivery, you said this morning, of branded planes. What are your plans for the publicly visible brands and is there any role for multi-brand internally between the different opcos? Yes, there's no great change in the strategy other than we're no longer selling Lauda as a public brand. Lauda is doing sub-service flying for other airlines within the group, when they return with the Airbus aircraft, hopefully later on this summer. Malta Air, we continue to sell. Malta Air will take some aircraft that will be branded as Malta Air. Some of the first six or eight of the new deliveries from Boeing will be branded as Malta Air. Buzz continues to expand in Central and Eastern Europe. It now has taken over most of the Ryanair bases. Again, most of the selling is done across the ryanair.com platform. The other group airlines are providing lift to Ryanair. Ryanair is the main brand. Ryanair is the main website and selling vehicle, and it makes sense for us therefore to continue to promote Ryanair as the main sales brand. With the operating capacity and the lift being provided by other group airlines, in our case, Malta Air based in Malta, Buzz based in Central Eastern Europe, and in a post-Brexit world, Ryanair UK or RUK will do the very small number of U.K. domestic and U.K. to non-EU destinations that we'll be flying. Does it then make sense to talk about profitability with the opcos? Essentially Malta Air and Buzz are just wet leases into Ryanair DAC. No, it doesn't. Frankly, it doesn't make much sense to talk about operating profit at the moment until we see the vaccines and the recovery out of COVID. There will be some segmental reporting in the annual accounts. In reality, we want to maintain simplicity while the multi-AOC strategy gives us more operating efficiency and operating cost benefits. Remember, one of the key reasons for the multi-brand strategy was so that we could have people employed in local countries paying local taxes and moving away from the Irish, and in the case of Laudamotion, the Austrian insistence that they want to tax everybody across Europe, in Ireland or in Austria. Why not just? Sorry, that's three questions, Daniel. I'm going to penalize you or levy a fine you for the next one. Give me the third one, that's it. Go ahead. Thanks. Our next question. No, go ahead with the question. Sorry. Look, I just want to say, why not paint everything in Ryanair then? Ultimately, if I take everything in Ryanair, I have to fall back on the Irish government insists on taxing rights here for pilots who are based in Italy or in Spain or in Portugal. With the unionization, we negotiated local pay deals. They wanted local contracts and therefore local taxation in all of those countries. There are operating efficiencies too to having what I say multi-AOCs rather than multi-brands. I've never been hugely impressed or stressed about branding. Having multi-AOCs, it is more efficient. For example, our Italian pilots who are now employed by Malta Air, but on the Maltese AOC are much more efficient because they qualify for the same allowances and tax benefits that Alitalia's pilots do. Therefore, there's a significant benefit for our people in having those local contracts and local tax arrangements, as well as an operating cost saving to Ryanair having local pay and local taxation in those countries. Got it. Thanks very much. Thanks, Daniel. Next question, please. Our next question comes from Duane Pfennigwerth from Evercore. Please go ahead. Duane, hi. Hey, good morning. Just given the more favorable aircraft economics, some of the airport deals you've highlighted and some of the staffing efficiencies, could you give us a sense for what percent of your capacity would you be able to hit your old unit cost profile, whether that's 70%, 80%, 90%? Once you get back to 100%, how much of a tailwind do you feel like you have locked in? How much lower could unit costs be? I'm not sure I understand the first half of the question. What our capacity recovery this year or next year, the honest answer is we don't know. We're operating, I think something at the moment, and these are very movable figures. I think we're looking at maybe something like 20%, 25% in Q1. It could be between 50% and 70% in Q2. That is the September quarter. The December, March quarters three and four, it's probably something between 75% and maybe 90%, possibly 100%. You'll move to the higher numbers the faster and the more aggressive or more successful the vaccine rollout program is. You move to the lower numbers if there's delays in the vaccine licensing rollout, et cetera. It's really very movable, and that's why we have such a wide guidance on the traffic into next year of sizing between 80 million-120 million compared to our 2019 number of 150 million. The following year, we think we go back into strong growth. It'll go from that 80 million-120 million, we think up to it'll be something north of 150. It could be 160 million, 170 million. Operating costs be lower? Yes, they will. By how much? I don't know. The key drivers going forward for the next, I think foreseeable next two or three years. We have negotiated pay deals, pay cuts with our pilots and our cabin crew that run this year and next year. We give that back, or we have promised to restore that over a three-year period, which is, I think, fair and reasonable. That will give us lower salary costs. We have much lower aircraft ownership and operating costs as we take more of the Gamechanger aircraft. We'll have significantly lower fuel costs because I think over the medium term, oil prices will be much more stable, something in the EUR 40, EUR 50 per barrel. Our aircraft will be burning 14% less fuel while carrying 4% more passengers. Airport costs will be lower. I think ATC EUROCONTROL charge, there will be less ATC delays because of significantly less capacity across Europe. I think you're going to see many more European governments and airports roll out recovery incentives. Through the remainder of 2021 and into 2022, when they realize that Lufthansa and Air France and KLM have no intention of coming back with a lot of their original capacity. There will be a, I think, competition between states and airports to try to participate in that recovery earlier. If you go back to slide four of our presentation, which is our operating cost slide. That shows how much lower our operating costs are than any other airline on a per passenger basis. We don't mention RASMs, CASMs because no passenger yet has ever bought a RASM or a CASM ticket. Most of those operating cost lines, the gap between us and our competitors will get materially wider. You look at, for example, easyJet, who now have owned very little of their fleet. I think they own about 35% or 40% of their fleet. We will own all of our aircraft. They've been doing sale and leasebacks at distressed prices and high financing costs. We have lower cost financing. Same with Wizz, for example, who are adding these aircraft, but again, on expensive sale and leasebacks. Unable to compete with us on price at any of the airports where we compete with them. We've seen more recently, the retreat from Trondheim I think is indicative of that they've probably overexpanded into markets where, frankly, their business is unable to compete with the likes of Ryanair. It appears in Trondheim it's not even able to compete with Norwegian, which is a fairly low bar. It is what it is. I think the critical thing is that the cost gap between us and every other airline in Europe will materially widen as we start to take delivery of a significant flow of the Gamechanger aircraft, not just into summer 2021, summer 2022, and summer 2023. Thank you. Next question. Sorry, [audio distortion]. Our next question comes from Savi Syth from Raymond James. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, Michael. I understand it's your position that vaccines should replace testing, quarantine, and other travel restrictions. I was wondering if where you have confidence that countries are going to take that stance, and if there are any country opportunities that stand out where maybe the government action is supportive of a faster traffic recovery or where you expect more of the competitive capacity be removed? I think, Savi, it's a personal view. If you take the U.K., who are certainly leading the world at the moment in the vaccine rollout program and with significant success. I think, and I've been very critical of the U.K. government in mismanaging a lot of the COVID response, they deserve credit for the success of the vaccine rollout program. I think politically, it will be very difficult for governments like the U.K. government to lock down the population beyond the end of March when they're able to announce that 50% of the population have been vaccinated. Including all the high-risk groups, the over 50s, the nursing homes, and the hospitals. Vaccinating those high-risk groups means you have a significant decline in morbidities, hospitalizations, deaths, and rates of sickness. Yes, you may still have COVID in the community, but if you have COVID passing around in young people who typically do not suffer significant illness, are unlikely to be hospitalized, and certainly don't die from COVID. Particularly as we move into a summer period. I think there is likely to be huge political pressure on those politicians and governments to ease the restrictions. People will want to go back on holidays. If you've been cooped up at home for the last 12 months homeschooling with children, you do not want to be locked up. You want to go and book summer holidays. Even the experience last year, before there was ever a vaccine, there was a significant recovery in holiday travel through June, July, and August when we returned to flying, having been completely shut down in April, May, and June. Maybe, Michael, on the second part of that, is there any kind of particular countries where you see the competitive capacity coming out more so? Is it just generally across Europe? I think it's been generally across Europe. If you look at the U.K., for example, Flybe have gone bust 8 million seats. Norwegian have completely disappeared, and they had probably about 4 million or 5 million seats in the U.K. market. Thomas Cook has gone bust. In Germany, Germanwings has gone bust. Lufthansa has probably reduced its capacity by 20%-30%. Across Europe, even the legacy airlines who are receiving huge amounts of state aid are materially reducing their capacity, both short haul and long haul. Alitalia looks like it may be bailed out again by the Italian government, but the fleet is going to be cut by about 30%. These are huge capacity reductions, and they create enormous opportunities for airlines like Ryanair to go into those spaces. As Eddie said, we jumped on the easyJet withdrawal from Venice and Naples. The Norwegian withdrawal, not so much from Gatwick, but in Spain and Italy, has created huge opportunities that we are actively negotiating expansion at those airports. The most important one of all of those has been the four-year extension of the low-cost deal at Stansted. We now have a low-cost growth incentive scheme at Stansted runs out to 2028, and we will all have forgotten COVID by the time we get to 2028. We will have materially lower airport and handling costs in Stansted than any other airline will have at Gatwick or at Heathrow. Thanks to the agreement with easyJet on their base aircraft slot, we will account for about 90% of the capacity, certainly the overnight capacity at Stansted Airport, with a materially lower cost base than airlines will have at Luton, Gatwick, or at Heathrow. I think you'll see the recovery in Gatwick and Heathrow will be significantly slower because of the absence of long-haul traffic. I think long-haul is probably going to take two years to recover, partly because I think in many cases, the southern hemisphere countries will not be as aggressive with rolling out the vaccines. That's where you're likely to see more of these vaccine variants like the Brazilian one and the South African one. There'll be more of those in the southern hemisphere. Thanks, Savi. Next question, please. Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Simpson from Goodbody. Please go ahead. Mark, hi. Yeah, morning. I just want to pick up that comment earlier that ancillary was kind of okay. I'm sorry, speak up. Can barely hear you. Yeah. Hi, sorry. Can you hear me now? That's better, yes. Just on the ancillary front. It was up 2.2% revenue per pax in the quarter, which I think Neil described as okay. I thought that was slightly disappointing. We've seen it up in double digits in the second quarter, it obviously been up in mid-teens through the previous four quarters. I'm just wondering whether there's anything specific in since our annualization of a change, or can we expect that to re-accelerate going forward? As I say, I don't think it was actually that spectacular this quarter, that performance. Okay, Mark, I think I beg to differ with you on that. We're generating EUR 20.40 per passenger, and ancillaries were just up 2%, were up just about 12% on a nine-month basis. We continue to see strong penetration on the likes of reserve seating the priority board. Onboard spend, which typically in a good year would account for about EUR 250 million in revenue, is pretty much nonexistent at this point in time. That will bounce back in due course. The other products will bounce back. We've got very small customer volumes, 8 million, so we're not getting the opportunities to sell a number of the products that we would normally sell. I'm quite pleased with the 2% per passenger increase up to EUR 20.40. I think I'd just add to that. As we emerge out of COVID, one of the areas that's going to open up again is duty free on flights to and from the U.K., which would account for what? About 20%-25% of our volumes. We will see, I think, a reasonable upward impact on ancillaries as a result of being able to sell duty free again on board our flights from the U.K., to and from the U.K. You'll see that coming through while still growing our penetration on things like reserve seats, priority boarding. COVID has been very good for the propensity of people to take up those ancillary services. Clearly, with small passenger numbers, in-flight sales for things like teas, drinks, and snacks has been down. That will recover strongly once we get vaccinated and we move into a post-COVID world. Just to follow on, how are you going to manage the duty free? Will that be kind of collect at arrival or sort of collect before boarding? How do you manage that in terms of minimizing, let's say, the disruption from the process or the weight you're carrying on board on planes? Yeah. Mark, it's Eddie here. Yeah, don't forget, we've been experimenting with pre-order as well. We're still working through what will be the best way to sort of deliver that on board. We'll probably have smaller units as well on board, so to make it more attractive. Now that you've got various solutions that people can order from their seats and some of the technology we've been trialing as well. I don't think we'll have the same sort of logistical issues. Just to add to the point as well on earlier, talking about the ancillaries. Don't forget that on those ancillaries as well, the key ones, they are done at much lower load factors where you don't have people chipping in to necessarily higher prices that you would see. I think you will see ancillaries as well sort of, I think it's quite an impressive performance given we didn't have high load factors as well. On those flights to and from the U.K., you're looking at destinations like the Canary Islands, Spain, Portugal. Those are two and three-hour flights. I would still see a significant role for in-flight sales on board those flights, where there is a real propensity for people to buy alcohol and things like that, particularly where there's a duty-free benefit for them doing so. Thank you. Next question, please. Our next question comes from Stephen Furlong from Davy. Please go ahead. Stephen, hi. Hi, Michael. Can you just talk more generally about Italy and the Italian market? There seems to be a lot going on there with Alitalia shrinking. Obviously you have your base at Venice and a couple of other places. Just generally what the tourism authorities or Southern European airports are saying about this summer, that'd be useful, because I think there must be a big opportunity in Italy. Thank you. I think there's still a lot of uncertainty. One of the challenges for a lot of the airports is they're being told by the incumbent legacy, oh, don't worry. All the capacity will return. Despite the fact that they may have reduced their fleet by 25% or 30%. A lot of that capacity will not return, but they won't know quite how much their airports or their traffic is going to be damaged until probably summer of 2022. There are undoubtedly, the more kind of the alert airports in Italy we're already in with the new base done with Venice and Treviso, who were onto us even before easyJet had announced. They haven't closed the base there, but they've gone from six aircraft down to two. Naples, we were the first people they called once they got the smell that easyJet were going to kind of close the Naples base as well. That trend continues across Europe. It is happening in Portugal. TAP look like we are taking about 25% of their fleet completely out. There is about 4 million or 5 million passengers' worth of travel. Now, clearly Faro, Porto are very exercised. Lisbon less so because again, they are not quite sure what TAP are going to do or not do, and they are sort of heavily involved in the mass protection of TAP by the government in Portugal. Those opportunities are not going to go away. There is no other airline out there that is taking delivery of 100 aircraft in the next two years or 200 aircraft in the next five years. I think most of the other airlines that are out there will struggle to get most of their capacity back up and running even for summer 2021. The big challenge for a lot of the legacy airlines is the long haul is clearly not going to recover into summer or winter 2021. I think a lot of them won't even have recovered by 2022. An awful lot of their short-haul flying is designed to feed or feed into or from their long-haul operations. They can protect the slots through this summer aided and abetted by the slot waivers. All that means is they're just not going to fly the short-haul aircraft or the long-haul aircraft. I think we are already seeing very significant incentives with a lot of our airport partners for the summer 2021. I think winter 2021 they will get even better, and I would be prepared to grow aggressively in the winter of 2021, even on the back of lower airfares. Frankly, we have much lower cost that we'll be able to sustain those lower airfares as a way of almost boosting our capacity and our forward bookings into the summer of 2022. We will emerge out of this with a much lower cost base, much lower than any other airline, and we should use that to lower prices to take as much market share as we can cope with in the recovery into summer 2021 and summer 2022. Got it. Thanks. Bye. Our next question comes from James Hollins from Exane BNP. Please go ahead. James, hi. Hi. Morning. Yeah. A question for Neil, actually. I'm just wondering if you could quantify your Q3 cash refunds as well as delayed EUROCONTROL payments, and how they might play out in Q4, or better still give us some sort of steer on Q4 cash burn. Thank you. Okay. I'll give kind of high-level numbers here, James. We would've had over EUR 300 million going out in refunds, about EUR 200 million in fuel swaps, and somewhere between EUR 60 million and EUR 80 million in deferrals in the quarter. You can see that accounts for a big chunk of the billion movement in cash between Q2 and Q3. Am I right in thinking there's no Boeing compensation? Into Q4, relatively small on the fuel swaps. We're looking at probably just about over EUR 100 million. Refunds were caught up. Nothing. On the refunds we're caught up, so we're literally as we're canceling flights, we're refunding within the requisite number of days required by legislation. There'll be nothing significant on CapEx. Some maintenance CapEx going through, some debt repayments, and that would be the key elements. We're kind of burning the cash levels that we were talking about back in the summer. Excluding any cash that we're generating, we're probably burning somewhere in the region about EUR 50 million-EUR 60 million a week gross payments. Okay. Then any into from Boeing shortly? Well, we hope to see the first aircraft coming in soon. I think there'll be some additional cash coming in from Boeing in the fourth quarter. It'll be significantly less than we saw in Q2. Okay. Thanks very much. Okay. Thanks, James. Next question, please. Is there any more questions? Is it me? No, I'm all right now. Okay. Thanks, James. Hello, moderator. Our next question is from Neil Glynn from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Neil, hi. Hi there. Morning. Just again, on the subject of airports. Apologies, but last week there was mention of hub or primary airports in Western Europe reluctance to allocate slots to competitors, to flag carriers. You're obviously appealing against state aid. I was just wondering to what extent are you actually seeing this kind of impact today? Is it simply more, as you've touched on, that the airports don't have the necessary clarity and can't actually make the decision? I don't know where that report came from, but it's rubbish. Firstly, airports don't allocate slots. It's nothing to do with them. The slots are generally owned by the airlines who either use them or lose them. There's a huge amount of slots there that have been freed up as a result of the closure of the likes of Flybe, Thomas Cook, Air Berlin. There will be a lot of slots at main legacy airports that will be held back through the slot waiver program, but that's largely at the big slot-controlled airports that we're not interested in, like Charles de Gaulle, Schiphol, Heathrow. There will be no slot available, I think, in Gatwick. One of the reasons why Wizz will struggle to get into Gatwick is that there will be very few slots handed over in Gatwick. easyJet looks like they’ve successfully moved to get hold of the Norwegian slots and will probably block them out from that. At any of the other airports we want to grow at, and I give you by way of examples only, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Fiumicino, Stansted, Dublin. Lisbon, we could do with some freeing up some of the TAP slots. If we don’t get them in the short term, they’ll come eventually. Other than that, we will be expanding aggressively, I suspect, in Faro and in Porto. There is no airport slot restrictions to our growth and expansion over the next year or two. We could happily allocate, if I could get all 200 aircraft from Boeing in the next three months, we could happily allocate all those aircraft in the next three to four months without any slot restrictions whatsoever. I think what is likely to happen at those main airports, the Charles de Gaulle, the Schiphol, Heathrow, their traffic recovery will be a lot slower, only because long-haul will take longer to recover. The legacy airlines will sit on the slots. Fine, that's their problem. If those big hub and spoke airports suffer for another year or two, it frankly couldn't happen to nicer people. In the meantime, the sensible or intelligent ones will already have done growth incentive agreements with Ryanair and be returning to very strong growth. Very clear. Thank you, Michael. Our next question comes from Jaime Rowbotham from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Jaime, hi. Morning, gents. Hi. I wanted to also focus on cash quickly. You'll hope that the next two quarters might bring in some cash in the form of bookings. If it doesn't, will you be happy letting the gross cash balance of the group move down from EUR 3.5 billion to EUR 2 billion with those debt repayments or possibly lower, I guess? Might you then call upon the unencumbered fleet that you regularly mention for some asset-backed loans? Just linked to that, you'll have seen the partially government-backed UK Export Finance loans extended to easyJet and British Airways. Is there anything similar that Ryanair could or would ever look to explore? Thanks. Okay. I think we're reasonably comfortable with the cash position at the moment. For the obvious reason, one, we expect a strong recovery into the summer of this year. That will fire up the cash flows. We'll be receiving in those bookings or the cash, those bookings typically six, eight weeks prior to travel. The expenses don't go out for a month or two months after travel. If that doesn't emerge, I think we're still reasonably comfortable with our cash position. We expect to repay the U.K. government loan of GBP 600 million in March. We have a bond repayment of EUR 850 in June. We expect to comfortably repay that from the current cash position. I would be happy to see our cash run down to EUR 2 billion, EUR 1.5 billion, EUR 2 billion. I wouldn't want to see it go down below a billion. We have numerous sources of additional financing out there open to us at the moment if we want to tap into them. We have a huge unencumbered fleet. The bond market is open to us at much lower rates than, for example, we looked at the U.K.-backed government loans. easyJet and IAG are paying about 3% cost of funding, cost of financing on those loans. It wouldn't be attractive to us. Heavily secured as well. Heavily secured. We think we could readily. I would say inundated. We are inundated with offers of people wanting to lend us money both on a secured and an unsecured basis at typically half those rates or less. We haven't drawn them down because frankly, we don't see the need to draw them down. I think people need to look more to the medium term. The vaccines are coming, the rollout is coming. There will be more vaccines licensed. Nevertheless, we run kind of downside scenarios and delay scenarios, and there's nothing out there we can see at the moment that would require us to raise additional debt this year. If we need to, we can, and we're confident we can, and we will. That's a very helpful answer. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Jaime. Next question please. Our next question comes from Alex Paterson from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead. Alex, hi. Morning, everybody. Hi there. I just wonder if you can give a bit more color on fares in the third quarter. They were down about 1/3 on the prior year, a much bigger decline than in the previous quarter. Is that because of a different booking profile or changing mix? What's happened there, please? Fares have been down. The booking profile has got much later. In the third quarter, people were only making bookings if they really needed to travel over a reasonably short horizon. With a lot more flying was being done on domestic routes in Spain, in Italy and in the U.K. than international travel. Third quarter is also a period where historically yields fall anyway. You're not dealing with the high-yielding summer people going on holidays or school holidays. We also lost our peak Christmas. At very short notice. The U.K. brought in those, or many EU countries brought in those U.K. restrictions on the 19th and 20th of December. We expect there to be a reasonably strong and robust recovery of fares into the summer of 2021. If, again, I keep going back to the vaccines roll out, people start moving again. The yields will build slowly because clearly our forward bookings into the summer are lower than they would be historically at this time of the year. We think they'll recover strongly as vaccines roll out and people are more confident that they can go on holidays during July, August and September. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Thanks, Alex. Next question, please. Our next question comes from Muneeba Kayani from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Muneeba. Yes. Muneeba, hi. Two questions. Firstly, can you kind of quantify what percent of the fleet and crew are flight ready right now? Secondly, in terms of the new aircraft, how are you thinking about it in terms of adding new bases or new frequencies on existing routes? Okay. Well, in relation to the fleet and the crew, 100% are current. We're operating as I've said, we've consistently taken the view through the pandemic, even when we don't have sufficient flights, like when we were entirely grounded in the June quarter last year. We were operating empty flights on a weekly basis to keep, the critical one, to keep the aircraft current. We don't want the aircraft losing currency because they've got to go back in for maintenance then before you put them back in the air. Each aircraft, I think, has to fly once a week. That we've maintained. We're maintaining all our crew currency as well. We're ready to pounce on any reopening and to rapidly accelerate into any reopening. On new aircraft, again, as always Muneeba we will be opportunistic. The first couple of planes will largely go to the main maintenance bases. Dublin, London Stansted, probably Milan Bergamo, and I'd say Buzz will take their aircraft into Katowice or to Kraków or Katowice in Poland. Kraków in Poland, where we have substantial maintenance. I think with a new aircraft type, we need to make sure that for the first couple of months, we're operating essentially from and to main maintenance bases. If there's any issues, our engineers can address it immediately. Other than that, I think as we roll into next winter and we begin to spool up from the first day, 20 or 25 deliveries to the second 50 aircraft for the summer 2022. The aircraft will be allocated across those bases and those airports who are coming up with the best growth incentives. There are a number of airports too who are very attracted by the fact that these aircraft reduce the noise envelope by 40%. Those airports that are under pressure, I think from the environmental lobby are also incentivizing us to base these aircraft or fly these aircraft to those airports. In general terms, the aircraft will be based and will fly to those airports who are willing to incentivize the aircraft. The nature of the kind of discussions we're having with some of those airports is we won't be charged for the extra seats. We would be moving more towards a landing fee payment rather than a per passenger payment. Now, it would still only be a 4% reduction, but all these 4% reductions add up very quickly. Next question, please. Our next question comes from Hunter Keay from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning, everybody. Hunter, hi. Hi. The 200 million passenger target by fiscal 2026. Can you get there if the MAX 10 is either canceled or delayed? Well, we certainly can't get there if it's canceled, but I don't see any likelihood of it being canceled. The MAX was certified as return to flying in North America in December. There's been no issues with it. It's accomplishing many hundreds, if not thousands of flights daily on the wing in North America, in Brazil, in Canada. It has been released to return to service here by EASA last week. We expect to see the first couple of flights on MAX aircraft here or the grounded aircraft return to service probably in February or March as the European travel restrictions are lifted. Assuming there is no significant interruptions in either the MAX return to service or the MAX deliveries, then no, we're very confident we'll get to 200 million passengers by 2026. If there is some unforeseen development or delay in either the MAX airworthiness or in the MAX deliveries, then yes, that date might get pushed back. Yeah. No, Michael, I'm sorry. I'm talking about the MAX 10 specifically. The 737 MAX 10 variant. The MAX 10 is not factored into our numbers for the EUR 200 million, Hunter. Yeah. That's predicated on our existing orders. The MAX 8-200s. The 8-200s coming in and exiting some of the older aircraft from the fleet. The MAX 10 would really be incremental growth from 2025 onwards. We are already in discussions with Boeing on the MAX 10. The MAX 10 delivery has been pushed back because they have more issues to accomplish with the FAA and the EASA to get the MAX 10 certified. As soon as they start making them and delivering them, we would certainly be there looking to order them. We think the MAX 10 will give us yet another operating cost saving on top of the already impressive operating cost savings delivered by the MAX 8-200s Gamechangers. Thank you. Thanks, Hunter. Next question, please. Our next question comes from Gerald Khoo from Liberum. Gerald. Go ahead. Morning, everyone. One from me. You've set out your wide range for passengers for next year, 80 million- 120 million. I was just wondering what sort of load factor assumption underpins that. Are we still talking about the 70% that you're targeting at the moment? Or are we getting towards the sort of 90%+ that you get in a normal year? We're loosely looking at how we try not to run any operation if we don't have a 70% load factor. It's kind of predicated around a 70% load factor in the first two quarters, rising to maybe an 85%, 90% load factor in the second two quarters or the second half. We don't see ourselves going back straight away to 93% or 94% load factors. We do expect the load factors to build. We would still be reasonably, I think, effective at maintaining reasonably high load factors. The one figure I took from both the Wizz and the easyJet numbers last week was their load factor fell to mid-low 60%. We've generally maintained a load factor above 70% through the third quarter. We'll expect to do so again, although there might be a bit of a struggle into the fourth quarter just because there's so few airplanes flying. I think we're operating generally 70% H1, growing to 85%, 90% H2. It could be a little bit higher, and it could be a little bit less than that. Okay, great. Thanks very much. Thanks, Gerald. Our next question comes from Duane Pfennigwerth from Evercore. Please go ahead. Duane. Duane? Has he gone already? Duane, do you have a question? Yeah. Can you speak to the significant spike upward in bookings that you referenced earlier in the script? Can you put that in context or put any numbers to it relative to what you have been seeing? No, I wouldn't want to put any numbers to it. Look, there's a significant spike upward, but off a very low base. Since we ran the Jab & Go advertising over Christmas into the New Year, we've seen a significant uptick in holiday bookings out of the U.K., in Germany, in Spain, out of Ireland. As I said also, we're running materially behind where we would normally have been this time of the year for forward bookings into the summer holiday period. We've a bit a way to go to catch up. We think that would be caught up very quickly once there's more confidence in the vaccine program and the removal of lockdown restrictions and travel restrictions. We think it would snap back very strongly. I go back to the experience we had last summer when the U.K. removed the Canary Islands from the lockdown restrictions. There was a massive surge in bookings almost instantaneously, not just onto our service, but most of the airlines operating between the U.K. and the Canary. I think you'll see more of that. I wouldn't want to over-egg it or mislead people. There's been a significant upward spike in bookings, but off a very low base since Christmas for holiday travel to sun destinations in the summer. We're still running well behind where we would have been this time last year for those destinations. Thank you. Thanks, Duane. Next question, please. Thank you. Unfortunately, that's all the questions we have time for. I'll hand back to the speakers for any other question. Great. Okay. Thanks very much, everybody, for participating. We have a number of investor calls. I think there's a number of group investor calls, which we're organizing today and tomorrow. A lot of this, we don't have much more information to give you. We are somewhat in the lap of the gods with the vaccine rollout program. I think pretty quickly, the narrative during the month of February is going to move away from lockdowns and restrictions towards vaccinations and the removal of restrictions. I think the success of the U.K. program is going to put enormous political pressure on the European Commission and on European national governments to get their finger out of their asses, and accelerate the vaccine programs. Yes, there'll be some production issues, but largely with more vaccines, like particularly the Johnson & Johnson vaccine when it gets licensed. The issue will not so much be about production supply as delivery, logistics, and delivery into the population of Europe. I would be reasonably confident at this point in time that the success of the U.K. program will now have to be mirrored across Europe, and that we'll see a reasonable return to relatively high volume travel in our second quarter, that key July, August, September quarter. First quarter will be disappointing because of the stringency of the lockdowns in the January, February, March quarter. Easter will be a write-off, and that will carry forward into April, and mean that May will be sluggish. Again, I go back to our key fundamentals. When we return, we will return with much lower operating costs, lower cost aircraft, lower cost airports, lower cost fuel, more efficient aircraft, and in a market where there will have been meaningful capacity reductions. I think we will be moving very quickly to exploit those opportunities and to get people and the tourism industry back to work, hopefully through the summer of 2021, and certainly before we get to the autumn of 2021, autumn, winter 2021. Okay, folks, thank you very much for participating. Look forward to speaking to you over the next couple of days. If you want a call or to join one of the group calls, please contact Peter or Neil here in the investor relations team. We'd be glad to have you. Thanks very much, everybody. God bless. Bye-bye.