Ryanair has said that it will significantly cut its flight schedules from Thursday 21 January to and from the UK and Ireland in response to new lockdown measures.
It said “newly announced Covid lockdowns in Ireland, the UK, and a small number of other EU countries this week… will result in few, if any, flights being operated to or from Ireland or the UK from the end of January until such time as these draconian travel restrictions are removed.”
As a result, the airline has revised down its passenger forecast for the 2020-21 year to between 26 million and 30 million, down from its earlier full year forecast of less than 35 million.
The airline said the new forecast would not materially affect its net loss for the year to 31 March 2021 “since many of these flights would have been loss making”.
The airline also called on the Irish and UK governments to accelerate the pace of vaccine rollouts. It said that Denmark, with a population of 5 million, had vaccinated 40,000 citizens by 6 January, whereas Ireland with a similar population, had vaccinated just 4,000.
A Ryanair spokesperson said: “The WHO have previously confirmed that governments should do everything possible to avoid brutal lockdowns, because lockdowns ‘do not get rid of the virus’. Ireland’s Covid-19 travel restrictions are already the most stringent in Europe, and so these new flight restrictions are inexplicable and ineffective when Ireland continues to operate an open border between the Republic and the North of Ireland.”