Ryanair says that materially lower forward bookings
in November and December have forced it to cut capacity from 60 per cent of
2019 levels to 40 per cent.
The airline, Europe's largest by passenger numbers, says it will close its Cork, Shannon
and Toulouse bases for the winter but retain 65 per cent of its usual route network
with a lower frequency of service. It is cutting the number of aircraft at
its bases in Belgium, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Vienna.
Ryanair’s group CEO Michael O’Leary said: “We have
continued to flex our capacity in September and October to reflect both market
conditions and changing government restrictions, with the objective of sustaining
a 70 per cent load factor, which allows us operate as close to breakeven as
possible and minimise cash burn. While the Covid situation remains fluid and
hard to predict, we must now cut our full year traffic forecast to 38 million
guests.”
He continued: “While we deeply regret these winter schedule cuts,
they have been forced upon us by government mismanagement of EU air travel. Our
focus continues to be on maintaining as large a schedule as we can sensibly
operate to keep our aircraft, our pilots and our cabin crew current and employed
while minimising job losses.
"It is inevitable, given the scale of these
cutbacks, that we will be implementing more unpaid leave and job sharing
this winter in those bases where we have agreed reduced working time and pay,
but this is a better short term outcome than mass job losses.
"There will
regrettably be more redundancies at those small number of cabin crew bases where we have still not secured agreement on working time and pay cuts, which
is the only alternative. We continue to actively manage our cost base to be
prepared for the inevitable rebound and recovery of short haul air travel in
Europe once an effective Covid-19 vaccine is developed.”
The airline has called on EU governments to adopt
the EU Commission’s traffic light system to allow for safe air travel on a regional basis.