Ryanair scales back a fifth of its f lights for two months
RYANAIR is to cut a fifth of its flights for the next two months after bookings dived on the back of new coronavirus travel restrictions.
At the same time it announced this scale-back plan yesterday, the no-frills airline also called for countries with better Covid rates than Ireland – including Germany and the UK – to be added to the green list for safe travel.
The airline said it will reduce its flight capacity by 20% in September and October after forward bookings ‘notably weakened’ in recent days.
The drop-off in flight bookings over the past ten days is being driven by ‘uncertainty over recent Covid case rates in some EU countries’. The cuts will reduce the frequency of flights from countries such as Spain and France.
However, the Michael O’Leary-run airline is not closing any routes but instead reducing capacity on them.
It announced just two weeks ago its flights were almost three-quarters full in July – although that is on just 40% of its normal schedule.
Ryanair said the cuts would be in the number of flights rather than route closures, and they will be heavily focused on those countries such as Spain, France and Sweden, where recent surges of Covid-19 cases have led to increased travel restrictions, and also Ireland, which has a restrictive green list.
Ireland makes visitors from most EU countries undertake a 14-day quarantine. This includes travellers from countries with lower Covid rates than Ireland over the past 14 days, such as Germany, which has 16.3 cases per 100,000 people, and Britain, 18.6, compared to Ireland’s 22.1.
Ryanair called on the Government to add EU countries with lower or similar Covid case rates to the green list, ‘without delay, so that business and other family related travel can resume in September when schools reopen’.
That would allow Germany, the UK, Austria, 22.4, Portugal, 26.0, and Poland, 25.7, to be added to the ‘safe travel’ green list.
A Ryanair spokesman said yesterday: ‘These capacity cuts and frequency reductions for the months of September and October are unavoidable given the recent weakness in forward bookings due to Covid restrictions in a number of EU countries.
‘Any affected passengers in September received email notification advising them of their options.
‘Similar communications will be issued to the small number of affected passengers in October.
‘Over the past two weeks as a number of EU countries have raised travel restrictions, forward bookings – especially for business travel into September and October – have been negatively affected, and it makes sense to reduce frequencies so that we tailor our capacity to demand over the next two months.
‘We again call on the Irish Government to amend its green list of travel counties to include those EU countries with lower or similar 14-day
Covid case rates, most notably Germany whose Covid case rate is 25% lower than Ireland, and which will allow for some resumption of normal business and economic travel in September and October once the schools reopen.
‘Ireland’s isolationist green list has failed to prevent this recent rise in Covid case rates, despite Ireland having the most restrictive travel quarantine of any EU country since July 1.
‘This is in marked contrast to the performance of Italy, where the 14-day Covid case rate is less than half of Ireland’s, despite the fact Italy has been open to EU travel and tourism since July 1.’
Travel industry expert Eoghan Corry said of the Ryanair plan: ‘They’re reducing the capacity by 20% but there’s another rider in this that’s very important.
‘Ryanair’s plan was to put 40% of their fleet in the sky in July, 60% in August and 80% in September... So while they say they are cutting 20% of their forward flights, it’s still quite ambitious when you think of what they had planned.’
‘Capacity cuts are unavoidable’
‘Green list should be amended’