Ryanair to Cut October Capacity by Another 20% Due to Travel Restrictions, Policies

Photo source: Ryanair

Ryanair on Friday announced that it would cut its October capacity by a further 20 percent, due to damage caused to forward bookings by continuous changes in EU government Covid-19 travel restrictions and policies.

The capacity slash is in addition to the 20 percent cut the airline already announced in mid-August.

As underlined in an announcement, many of the travel restrictions are introduced at short notice, which undermine consumers’ willingness to make forward bookings.

“As customer confidence is damaged by government mismanagement of Covid travel policies, many Ryanair customers are unable to travel for business or urgent family reasons without being subjected to defective 14 day quarantines,” a Ryanair spokesperson said.

The airline now expects its October capacity to fall from 50 percent to some 40 percent of its 2019 levels for the same month, but expects to maintain a 70%+ load factor at this reduced schedule.

According to Ryanair, in some countries (most notably Ireland), where the governments have maintained excessive and defective travel restrictions since July 1, Covid-19 rates have risen in recent weeks to 50 per 100,000 pop. – more than double those of Germany and Italy – where intra-EU air travel was freely permitted since the same date.

The airline said that it welcomes the EU Commission’s plan to remove intra-EU travel restrictions and calls for this coordinated approach to be immediately implemented by all EU States, especially Ireland, so that EU citizens can make essential bookings for travel, free from the worry of flight cancellations and/or defective quarantine restrictions.

“While it is too early yet to make final decisions on our winter schedule (from November to March), if current trends and EU governments’ mismanagement of the return of air travel and normal economic activity continue, then similar capacity cuts may be required across the winter period,” the spokesperson added.