Ryanair Buys Remainder Of Laudamotion

Ryanair has taken full control of Laudamotion with the acquisition of the 25 percent of the Austrian carrier it didn’t own.

The Irish low cost carrier announced that it completed the purchase of Laudamotion GmbH from Niki Lauda’s NL Holdings in late December last year.

With the takeover complete, Ryanair plans to expand its Vienna-based subsidiary with the addition of more Airbus aircraft. The fleet will increase from the 19 A320s it flew for the 2018 summer schedule to 25 for 2019. It will add another five aircraft for the 2020 summer travel season, taking its total to 30.

The expansion will allow Laudamotion to grow its traffic from 4 million passengers in its first year of Ryanair’s ownership to 6 million in the year to March 2020, and to 7.5 million by March 2021.

Laudamotion will double its Vienna fleet to eight aircraft this year, and add planes to its three other bases - Düsseldorf, Stuttgart and Palma. By the end of 2019, the Vienna base will increase to 11 aircraft, taking Laudamotion into second place there in terms of fleet size, behind flag carrier Austrian Airlines.

“With the backing of Ryanair, Laudamotion is set to grow strongly over the next three years to carry 10 million passengers per annum,” Laudamotion chief executive Andreas Gruber said.

“We will release details of up to 20 new routes for winter 2019 once we have completed our airport and handling negotiations by the end of March.”

LaudaMotion is the company that Niki Lauda used to re-acquire the assets of Austrian leisure airline NIKI that he founded in 2003. NIKI was subsequently merged into Air Berlin in 2011, until that company’s insolvency in 2017. LaudaMotion beat IAG in a bidding process to acquire NIKI from Air Berlin’s administrators.

Ryanair agreed in March 2018 to buy a 24.9 percent stake in LaudaMotion, rising to an eventual 75 percent. The European Commission approved the deal unconditionally, citing the lack of competition concerns in relevant markets.