Recently, Ryanair’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, announced that during the 2015/2016 year, the English airline saw a profit of 1.24billion euros – a 43% increase from last year. One of the major factors contributing to this boom in profit is the increase in passengers. Ryanair saw an 18% increase in flyers, taking their passenger numbers from 90.6 million to 106.4 million. And O’Leary is confident their customer base will only continue to grow.

He explained that Ryanair operates on a load active/yield passive plan, which means that the airline is willing to cut ticket prices as needed in order to ensure that the planes are full. In O’Leary’s words, “We will take whatever price we get as long as we fill out airplanes. If there is a fare war in Europe, then Ryanair will be the winner.”

Moreover, Ryanair also experienced a 6% drop in the company’s costs, primarily due to lower oil prices. According to O’Leary, this means that moving forward into next year, Ryanair passengers may benefit from fares that will go down in price as much as 7% during the first half of the year and up to a 12% price decrease in the second half of the year. To give you an example, a return flight to Porto in the middle of August may soon cost air passengers £236 as opposed to £268.

As exciting as all these price reductions sound, Nick Trend, a Telegraph Travel’s consumer expert, has reminded passengers that despite the fact that Ryanair has already benefited from increased profits and decreased costs, their great financial standing hasn’t yet reflected into their customer’s experience that much. In the year 2015/2016, Ryanair’s average fare decreased by a mere 1%. Trend estimates that the airline will most likely benefit from approximately a €200 million profit, which means Ryanair’s 100 million passengers should in fact expect their prices to go down at least 4 to 5%, but Trend is skeptical.

Despite these logical projections, he highly doubts the airline will be that gracious to its passengers. Earlier this year, numerous airlines came under serious scrutiny for failing to reflect their savings on cheap fuel onto their customers. The reality is that over the past two years, fuel costs have fallen by 70%, yet airlines are still charging fuel surcharges to their passengers. Still, according to research conducted by Telegraph Travel, Ryanair as well as EasyJet, remain cheaper in pricing when compared to British Airways. But not by much.

Hopefully, O’Leary keeps his word, and Ryanair becomes one of the few airlines to successfully move away from this price exploitation and offer a far better price and service to their passengers.