Ryanair profits rose 42 per cent to €2.54 billion in the six months to the end of September, the airline said on Monday, after a record performance in its second quarter.

Passenger numbers at the Irish carrier rose 3 per cent to a record 119 million, as revenues grew 13 per cent to €9.82 billion in the six-month period, the first half of the group’s financial year.

Group chief executive Michael O’Leary noted that fares rose 13 per cent on the year ago period, allowing the airline to claw back a dip in ticket prices during the same period last year. Profit after tax climbed 42 per cent to €2.54 billion from €1.79 billion during six months ended September 2024.

Mr O’Leary said he had never been more confident about the company’s growth trajectory, and that it will have 29 new aircraft delivered in time for next summer.

“Boeing are really fixing their delivery problems,” he said. “We will have 29 new aircraft for summer 2026. We will have the first 15 of the Max 10 for summer 2027.”

Mr O’Leary also launched a stinging attack on Dublin and Cork Airport operator DAA over the imminent departure of chief executive, Kenny Jacobs, a former Ryanair executive, saying the public sector needed people like Mr Jacobs, who had been “fired” because he upset civil servants.

“I don’t agree with a lot of what Kenny Jacobs did. He has wasted €200 million building a stupid tunnel going nowhere. As a result, charges at Dublin Airport are about to rise about 10 per cent a year for the next four years, completely destroying the cost competitiveness of Dublin Airport.

“But to fire the chief executive and pay him off with what looks like about €1.2 million because he’s upset couple of bureaucrats in Fingal County Council, who are useless, and, much more importantly, because he’s upset a couple of bureaucrats in the failed Department of Transport shouldn’t be the way.”

He described Mr Jacobs as “somebody with elbows out” who “calls out the failure of the planning system or the abject failure of the civil servants in the failed Department of Finance”.

“Those are the kind of people we need in the public sector. Not stooges whose only job is not upsetting ministers, civil servants or county councillors. It just goes to show the shambles that exists within the public sector in Ireland and why Ireland can’t get anything f**king done.”

On Ryanair’s future, Mr O’Leary said: “We are now confidently embarking on a 10-year growth period where we will grow from 200 million to 300 million passengers.

“Last year profits were about €1.6 billion, or about €8 a passenger. This year, if you have the consensus, which is somewhere about €2 billion, we’re back up close to €10 profit per passenger.

“I’m reasonably optimistic we will grow to 300 million passengers over the next eight years and there is a reasonable prospect of increasing our net profit towards €13 or €14 a passenger over that period of time.”

On his own future, Mr O’Leary (64) said he is open to staying at the airline beyond the end of his current contract.

“Warren Buffett retired at 98 and I’m not even sure why he retired at 98,” he said. “I’m tied down up until 2028. As long as we can agree some reasonably fair compensation arrangement for me, I’m very happy to keep working beyond 2028.

“But we have a really strong middle management team coming through the network now, so I would be reasonably confident [in it].”

Traffic for the 12 months to the end of March next year is expected to grow by more than 3 per cent to 207 million passengers, Mr O’Leary predicted.

He added that it remained too early to provide “meaningful” full year profit guidance. “We do, however, cautiously expect to recover all of last years 7 per cent full-year fare decline, which should lead to reasonable net profit growth in full-year 2026,” he said.

The airline also announced a dividend of 19.3 cent a share which will be paid to shareholders in February.