Ryanair: being nice pays off

Shares in Ryanair have jumped following an overhaul of the airline's customer services.

Europe's biggest budget airline has reported a 32% jump in first-half profits and lifted its annual earnings forecast by 20% to €750m-€770m. Ryanair (LSE: RYA) said that a strategic overhaul and a revamp of its customer service were the main reasons for its sharply improved performance.

"If I'd known being nicer to customers was going to work so well", said CEO Michael O' Leary, "I would have started many years ago." The shares jumped by 7% on the news.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.