Ryanair warns bookings will halve this year

RYAnAIR expects the number of passengers it flies will halve this year and is braced to rack up a loss of at least £180m in the first quarter.

The no-frills airline believes it will carry 80m travellers in the year to March 2021 as it battles the coronavirus crisis.

This is down from an original estimate of 154m, and a 20pc cut from the 100m it forecast last week.

The airline carried 149m in the year to March 31 – up 4pc on the year before. Although it has slashed weekly costs from £178m in March to £53m in May, it still expects to make a loss of at least £180m between April and June.

This is usually one of the busier periods of the year, covering the easter and May bank holidays and school breaks.

The Irish carrier will cut 3,250 jobs – 3,000 among crew and pilots and 250 at head offices – and stop operating at certain airports in a bid to lower costs even more. Ryanair is planning to operate a skeleton fleet until July and August when it plans to ramp up to 40pc of its normal flights, or around 1,000 a day. By September, it wants to be running 60pc to 70pc of its normal schedule. But boss Michael O’Leary yesterday slammed the Government for ‘idiotic and unimplementable’ plans to quarantine people coming into the UK for two weeks to contain the potential spread of the virus.

The isolation proposals could scupper Ryanair’s plans to get back up and running. O’Leary told the BBC the Government had ‘mismanaged the crisis for many weeks’ and appeared to be ‘making this stuff up as they go along’.

As countries such as Italy plan to ease quarantine restrictions O’Leary said holidaymakers would be ‘gagging’ to go abroad to get some summer sun and said bookings for this summer were ‘building nicely’.

Ryanair reported annual profits surged 13pc to £893m last year, with revenues up 10pc to £7.6bn. europe’s largest budget airline is sitting on a £3.7bn cash pile.

Investors were impressed that the firm has such a large cash pile, according to Stephen Furlong, a transport analyst at Dublin brokerage Davy.