Ryanair slashes flight schedule after UK lockdown

Bloomberg

Ryanair Holdings Plc slashed its winter schedule, while denouncing new coronavirus-related travel restrictions as “draconian” and calling for faster vaccine rollouts in the UK and its home country of Ireland.
Europe’s biggest discount airline said it will offer few flights from January 21 until the travel curbs are lifted. The cutbacks go beyond ones made earlier in the week by rivals EasyJet Plc, British Airways and TUI AG. Dublin-based Ryanair said on its website that passenger numbers will fall below 1.25 million in January, then drop to as few as 500,000 for February and March.
Levels that low would be reminiscent of last April and May, when air travel came to a
near-standstill as Covid-19 first
swept Europe.
They’d also bring Ryanair right up to the early April Easter break that usually marks an upswing in demand as the weather warms. Airlines are counting
on a rebound in traffic after missing out on the summer season last year.
“Winter is always loss-making,” said Stephen Furlong, an airline analyst at Davy Stockbrokers in Dublin. “What is crucial for Ryanair, and indeed the industry, is that bookings for the summer start coming in.”
Ryanair’s move will pull down traffic for the fiscal year ending in March, though the cutbacks won’t hurt profit because many of the trips would have lost money. The annual passenger tally is now seen at between
26 million and 30 million, versus the earlier outlook for “below
35 million,” it said.
The company called Ireland’s lockdowns “inexplicable and ineffective,” given that even after Brexit there is still an open border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK.
The fast-spreading virus strain that’s driven up UK case counts has dashed airline-industry hopes of impending relief from 2020’s unrelenting downturn. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced restrictions that will keep most people at home until mid-February, when vaccines
are able to stem the worst infection rates since the start of the outbreak.
Europe is also braced for further virus disruption. Germany is in lockdown until the end of the month, as statistics from air traffic authority DFS show that air traffic last year fell to the lowest level since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.