Ryanair remains committed to the Boeing 737 Max and will likely add to its order with the type’s largest variant, the Max 10, even though the continued grounding of the single-aisle aircraft forced the Irish low-cost carrier group to defer its target to fly 200 million passengers annually by “at least one or two years,” to its 2025 or 2026 fiscal years. It has scaled back its passenger growth forecast for its fiscal year ending March 2021 to 156 million from 162 million. The delivery delays also negated anticipated cost savings from operating the Max versus the 737-800 for the current fiscal year ending March 31 and most of next year, group CEO Michael O’Leary said during Monday’s presentation of the company’s third-quarter results.

The LCC has placed firm orders for 135 Max 200s—fitted with 197 seats compared with 189 in its 737-800NGs—and options on a further 75. Its first example should have arrived in April 2019. “It is now likely that our first Max aircraft will not deliver until September or October 2020,” O’Leary said. “We are now running one year behind the original delivery schedule. We had hoped to have 55 aircraft in the fleet for the summer of 2020. We’ll have none.”

Once the troubled narrowbody returns to service and the Max 200 gains certification, Ryanair could take delivery “reasonably quickly,” he asserted. “We are one of the only airlines having our own Max simulators,” said O’Leary. “The challenge is that we have never taken more than eight new aircraft in a [single] month before. That is as many as we would want to take.” Ryanair does not take deliveries during its summer peak of June to August and the airline now proceeds on the assumption of having taken some 50 Max jets by summer 2021, adding a further 50 examples for summer 2022 and “thereafter,” he said.

Ryanair has frozen pre-delivery payments to Boeing and, according to O’Leary, the company “wants to restart these but only when we have certainty on the delivery program.” Meanwhile, discussions continue with the U.S. airframer both on the pricing of the airplanes and on Boeing's reimbursements to Ryanair for costs and losses resulting from delayed deliveries. "These discussions can’t really be finalized until we have a confirmed delivery schedule,” he said, confirming he recently visited Chicago to meet the new Boeing top management team.

O’Leary insisted Ryanair remains confident in the Max. “We continue to look through the current noise and we believe this is a great aircraft,” he stressed, reiterating his long-standing argument that the Max 200 carries 4 percent more passengers than its Boeing 737NGs and burns 16 percent less fuel per flight. He added Ryanair’s senior pilots have flown the Max in simulators and the aircraft “handles brilliantly,” he said.

According to O’Leary, Ryanair informed Boeing of its interest in the Max 10, which can seat up to 230 passengers in a single-class configuration. “We have an offer on the table for an order for new Max 10s,” he revealed, adding that, nonetheless, he believes the OEM’s new management team is not in a position to talk about a new order. “We understand that, but we have an offer in and we expect to be at the head of the queue,” said O’Leary.

Ryanair reported an €88 million ($97 million) net profit for the three months ending December 31—a reversal from a €66 million loss in the same period a year ago—on a 6-percent increase in passengers to 36 million and a 13-percent rise in revenue per passenger.