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Ryanair has reduced its winter flight capacity from 60% to 40% from the previous year, blaming “mismanagement” of air travel by EU governments.
The Dublin-based airline said that increased flight restrictions had caused travel to various countries to be “heavily restricted”, causing bookings to weaken “slightly” in October and “materially” in November and December.
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Its program from November to March will now see it operate 65% of its usual winter network, with reduced frequencies.
The airline said it now expects year-round traffic to fall to 38 million, though that could be revised down if EU governments “continue to mismanage air travel and impose more closures this winter.”
That compares with just under $ 149 million for the year through the end of March 2020. The shares fell 3%.
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said: “While we deeply regret these winter time cuts, they have been imposed on us by government mismanagement of EU air travel.”
The airline said travel to and from Central Europe, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Austria, Belgium and Portugal had been affected by the latest restrictions.
It will close its bases in Cork, Shannon and Toulouse for the five-month winter period, while operations will be scaled back at bases in Belgium, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Vienna.
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O’Leary said: “It is inevitable, given the scale of these cuts, that we implement more unpaid leave and job sharing this winter on those bases where we have agreed to reduce work time and pay, but this is a better short-term outcome than the massive loss of jobs.
“Unfortunately, there will be more layoffs at that small number of cabin crew bases, where we have not yet reached an 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 upswing and recovery in short-haul air travel in Europe once an effective COVID-19 vaccine is developed.”
The airline’s chief executive called on EU governments to adopt a “traffic light system” established by the European Commission to allow safe air travel between countries with low case rates.
Ryanair said earlier this year that it would have to cut up to 3,000 jobs as a result of COVID-19, but announced in july that this number would be significantly reduced as most of the pilots and cabin crew had agreed to cut wages.
Aviation has been one of the sectors hardest hit by the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and Sky’s tracker of publicly announced job cuts shows more than 30,000 lost.
In the UK, the government recently set up a workgroup to study the use of tests to reduce quarantine times for travelers, although it received a tepid reception from the industry, which has been calling for action for months.
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