Reporting first quarter profit growth of 4%, Ryanair kept its guidance that full year profits would rise by approximately 12% for the year in place today, though it warned of a "number of head winds".
Chief Financial Officer Neil Sorahan told Business Breakfast that this could be good news for passengers, however, as the company aims to keep passenger numbers high in the face of Brexit, terrorist threats and continuing issues surrounding air traffic control strikes.
"It is a challenging environment out there at the moment," admitted Sorahan, "but Ryanair has the lowest costs which means we can offer the lowest fares, and that's why we continue to be profitable at the moment.
"There are a number of head winds out there at the moment, in the form of Brexit and indeed the terror events that we've seen around Europe over the last number of months."
Sorahan said that recent terrorist attacks on the continent had not resulted in a noteworthy increase in people opting not to fly thus far.
"People have made their travel plans so they're going ahead with them. Summer holidays is an important period for everybody. In fact, we're 1% better booked than we were at the same time last year.
"The impact is that we have to stimulate the market more than we would have done.
"Ryanair's policy is what we call 'load active, yield passive', which means we always hit the passenger numbers and the fare is whatever the fare is going to be. So there's great value out there for customers at the moment.
"And indeed as we move into the second quarter and into the winter, we're looking at further fare reductions which again represents great value for the travelling public."
Ryanair's target is to carry 117 million passengers in the year, up from the original guidance of 116 million, and Sorahan remains confident that it can achieve this.
While he confirmed that Ryanair's guidance has been retained for now, he cautioned that "there's more risk to the downside than the upside in a post-Brexit environment."
Sorahan also bemoaned the cancellations and flight disruptions that have come from recent strike action in Europe and France specifically.
He said:
"We've had the scandalous situation whereby we've had to cancel 1,000 flights in the first quarter of this year, due primarily to mismanagement of ATC facilities around Europe."
Ryanair has suggested a number of resolutions, with Sorahan stating that French unions "should be encouraged to engage in binding arbitration rather than going on strikes".
Where a strike can not be avoided, "other ATC providers in Europe should be allowed to handle the overflights over the skies where strikes are ongoing."
Sorahan also took aim at the "bizarre situation" where the airlines have to pay for the cost of these strikes and argued that "it should be a right for the airlines to claim this back against the ATC providers to the extent that it can be shown that they've mismanaged their staffing and their facilities."
