Ryanair has explained why your 2026 summer holiday flights will not get cancelled due to the jet fuel crisis and closure of the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East.

And the budget airline has gone one further by saying how flights going in to 2027 will also remain unaffected by this, all because of a clever arrangement the Irish business has with its suppliers.

CEO of Ryanair Group, Michael O’Leary explained the matter this morning (18 May) as the business shared its annual results for the 2026 financial year – a year in which they saw passengers grow from 200.2 million to 208.4 million.

Revenue went up alongside this from £13.95 billion to £15.54 billion. So if you wondered where your money went when you get caught with the wrong sized bag, here we are, and that’s before prices potentially rising if baggage rules change.

The inside of a Ryanair plane (Manuel Romano/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Ryanair’s hedged jet fuel avoids Hormuz crisis impact

Ryanair has been clever with its business, doing what is called ‘hedging’ when it comes to its fuel supply.

Long story short, and in layman’s terms, this is where the business has agreed in advance to pay a fixed rate for its fuel.

As it stands, Ryanair has hedged a massive 80 percent of its jet fuel needs up until April 2027. The price? We’re talking $67 a barrel.

On the open market, the price of jet fuel has risen from around $90 per barrel to as high as $200 per barrel, showing just how well insulated Ryanair is from the Iran War and Strait of Hormuz being blockaded. To compare it all to the life we live, it is a bit like agreeing to a fixed mortgage on your house or flat instead of going on a variable rate, where what you pay can change by the month due to interest rate changes.

“Ryanair’s conservative jet-fuel hedging strategy will insulate [Ryanair] earnings in the current very volatile oil markets and widen the cost advantage over EU competitors for the remainder of FY27,” O’Leary said.

Ryanair is going ahead with a normal summer season, it says (Oscar Gonzalez/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Jet fuel from elsewhere

In his statement on Ryanair’s jet fuel hedging, O’Leary said that the Straight of Hormuz is only one of many avenues to get supply.

“The conflict in the Middle East has created economic uncertainty and we still don’t know when the Strait of Hormuz will reopen,” he said.

“Despite this, Europe remains relatively well supplied with jet-fuel, with significant volumes sourced from West Africa, the Americas and Norway.”

As well as this, Neil Sorahan, Ryanair’s CFO, said he was ‘increasingly confident that we will not see any supply shocks this summer’.

Ryanair’s ‘Armageddon’ preparation is in hand

Despite the calm coming from inside Ryanair, Sorahan admitted that there is always a plan for ‘Armageddon’ despite plans for a fuller operational summer period.

He told CNBC: “Do we have plans for some kind of Armageddon situation? Of course, we do, but I don’t see that coming to pass.

“As things stand, we’re operating a full schedule this summer, and plan to operate a full schedule into the winter period.”

Credits: Ryanair

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Thousands more flights were cancelled on Monday as the turmoil in global air travel caused by the US-Israel war on Iran continued, with hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded.

Gulf airports and airlines have suspended normal operations until at least 10.00 GMT on Tuesday. However, a limited number of special services were due to depart from the UAE on Monday evening.

Airline and travel share prices fell sharply after days of disruption, with Donald Trump indicating that the US military action could last another four weeks.

Some carriers and travel companies are offering refunds or free changes to those due to travel in the coming weeks. Major Middle Eastern airports, including Dubai – the world’s busiest international hub – closed for a third consecutive day amid the most acute aviation shock since the Covid pandemic paralysed the industry.

Flights across the Middle East have been cancelled, disrupting thousands of services so far, as international carriers continued to suspend their services.

By 05.00 GMT, according to the analysts Cirium, almost 1,700 flights to the Middle East had been cancelled, although it warned that the figures were artificially low owing to limited data coming from Iran and the United Arab Emirates, where hundreds more flights were scheduled on Monday.

Cancellations most affected the Gulf carriers, all three of which now connect passengers worldwide via their hubs. Emirates, based in Dubai, and Etihad Airways, in Abu Dhabi, said flights to and from their hubs would not operate until late Tuesday morning, while Qatar Airways has suspended operations as long as Qatari airspace remains closed.

Emirates and Etihad were poised to resume selected flights on Monday evening, offering hope that wider passenger travel could resume. The UAE’s aviation authority said it would allow “special flights” across the country’s airports to operate to allow stranded passengers to depart.

An Emirates spokesperson said passengers who could travel would be notified and that other flights remained suspended.

Almost 2,800 flights were cancelled on Saturday, and 3,156 cancelled on Sunday, according to the tracking platform FlightAware.

Some flights to Cyprus have also been affected, with easyJet cancelling its return services between Paphos and Larnaca and the UK on Monday and Tuesday after a drone hit the RAF base in Akrotiri. British Airways said it had cancelled Monday’s Larnaca service.

Airspace over Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Israel, Bahrain, the UAE and Qatar was still virtually empty as of Monday, according to the flight-tracking website Flightradar24.

Virgin Atlantic said that avoiding Iraqi airspace was affecting flight times to Asia. It has cancelled Dubai flights from London until Wednesday but may resume Riyadh departures on Tuesday.

The impact has spread far beyond the Middle East, with passengers stranded from Bali to Frankfurt. Air India cancelled flights on Sunday departing from Delhi, Mumbai and Amritsar for big cities in Europe and North America.

Crew and pilots are now scattered across the world, complicating the process of resuming flights whenever airspace reopens.

As many passengers struggled to find information on the status of planned journeys, gathering at some of the world’s busiest commercial airports amid widespread delays and cancellations, the uber-wealthy found an alternative route out of the Middle East.

“Saudi Arabia is the only real option for people who want to get out of the region right now,” Ameerh Naran, the chief executive of the private jet brokerage Vimana Private, told Semafor, putting the cost of private jets from Riyadh to Europe at up to $350,000 (£260,000).

The region and its airlines have become used to travel disruption over the past few years, but such a prolonged closure of the skies – more than 24 hours – and the shutdown of all three big Gulf transit hubs was unprecedented, analysts said.

Shares in Tui, Europe’s largest travel company, dropped 9%, while the British Airways owner IAG was down 5%.

Tui said it would be contacting all customers due to travel to the Middle East in the coming week, while still making arrangements to bring people back from Dubai and Qatar. BA has told passengers due to fly out from London to the Gulf, Israel or Jordan until 15 March that they can delay travel free of charge. It has cancelled all flights to the Gulf until the end of Tuesday.

Up to 25,000 passengers could have flown on 74 UK flights to the Middle East on Monday, according to Cirium. Some flights to Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have also been cancelled but Egypt flights are so far unaffected.

Shares in airlines including Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, Qantas and Singapore also fell by between 5% and 9%. Hotelier Accor and the cruise company Carnival also fell sharply. US airline shares fell as Wall Street opened, with United Airlines down 3%.

Carriers around the world face higher oil prices after Brent crude jumped by as much as 13% to hit $80 a barrel, with analysts predicting they could climb as high as $100. Brent crude was later up 6% on the day, at $77 a barrel.

“For everyone the main impact will come through oil prices, which will obviously take a bump upwards,” said the aviation adviser Bertrand Grabowski.

The Gulf is a leading intersection for air cargo, putting further pressure on trade lanes on top of disruption at sea.

Credits: US Iran

The post Global Travel Chaos: Thousands of Flights Cancelled in Worst Disruptions Since the COVID-19 Crisis. first appeared on AircrewNews.com.