Ryanair aims to grow much faster than previously indicated over the next five years in a bid to exploit the weakness of mid-tier European rivals struggling with recession, the firm’s chief operating officer has told Reuters.

Three decades after it launched the industry’s cheap flights revolution, the Irish airline hopes to raise passenger numbers by more than eight per cent annually in 2015-18, double last year’s growth and up from a forecast of five per cent it gave in March.

“What we have indicated to the market is pretty conservative, it is at the lowest level we would expect,” deputy CEO Michael Cawley said in an interview. “It’s very likely to be much higher, edging up to seven or eight or even more.”

Cawley said the debt problems faced by many of the continent’s less developed and tourism-heavy southern countries would play into Ryanair’s hands, forcing the privatisation of airports and liberalisation of labour markets to provide the cheaper regimes it demands before investing in a route.

The airline is “quite optimistic” it can clinch a deal to boost traffic to Greece to 10 million passengers per year from 1.5 million at present, and said the Government was actively trying to unwind historic agreements with airports.

“You can look at the countries on the periphery and say they are basket cases, but, in fact, the inverse of that is the case. They are under-served,” Cawley said. He said, for example, that the number of seats per head of population was around five times higher in Dublin, Ryanair’s home base, than in Athens, pointing to the room for expansion.

Cawley said he saw huge potential in secondary airports in other parts of the Balkans and described Israel as a “fantastic opportunity”, principally as a tourist destination.