No airlines were immune. Global passenger traffic declined by 4% and cargo by 9% in the aftermath of September 11th. In sum, the world airlines lost some U.S$ 12 billion during this period and, together with the manufacturers and the wider travel and tourism industry; hundred of thousands of employees became redundant. According to research by the World Travel and Tourism Council, global travel and tourism demand declined by 404% in real terms in 2001 and is expected to fall by another 3% in 2002. One major concern of all airlines after September 11th is the expected rise in aviation insurance.
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For Ryanair, after September 11th, overall booking was down by 10% on normal. But it recovered rapidly from the aftermath of September 11th. The main reason why September 11th did not leave any significant impact on Ryanair was mainly because Ryanair's trading sector consist of domestic and Intra-European routes. And also of the total schedules 1800 flights, it cancelled only 16. Above that Ryanair marginally slashed its fares to encourage and promote more air travel. .
For the Emirates, September 11th hit real hard. It was because mainly of the political reason of its geographical location in the Middle East. It was perceived at that time, the nearer one is to Afghanistan, the greater the risk. And Dubai was falsely perceived as being very close to Afghanistan. Emirates traffic to European routes fell drastically. It took Emirates 7 months to recover its equilibrium and Emirates reached the 2001-02 profit target that was set a year ago (Net Profit of US $ 164.2 million). All this because, Emirates kept to their plan for the year, except marginally reduced the schedules and severely restrained cost. .
Competitor Positioning.
The strategy of low fare/no frill by Ryanair was considered as an anytime-it-will-break bubble by many of its competitors. Most of the Ireland, Dublin, U.K and other Europe routes were dominated by the giants like British Airways, KLM, Lufthansa, South West, Easy Jet etc.