Due to the increased number of travel restrictions whitin Europe, Ryanair has to cut its winter timetable significantly. Until now, the low-cost carrier assumed a capacity reduction of forty percent, but that has now been adjusted to a reduction of sixty percent. Ryanair is counting on an average occupancy rate of seventy percent.
Ryanair plans to maintain 65 percent of the route network, but flight frequency will drop greatly. The bases at the airports of Cork and Shannon in Ireland and Toulouse in France will even close completely this winter. In addition, Ryanair has decided to keep aircraft grounded, mostly in Belgium, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Austria.
Due to the unprecedented capacity reduction, Ryanair has had to adjust its forecast for the number of passengers to be transported in the current financial year to 38 million. By way of comparison: in the previous financial year this was 149 million. The company does not rule out that this number could have to be further reduced.
According to Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, it is inevitable that more staff will be sent on unpaid leave to bases where capacity is being reduced. There will also be ‘job sharing’ on a larger scale. If no agreement can be reached on a reduction in working hours and a salary reduction, compulsory redundancies are inevitable, according to O’Leary.
“We will continue to actively manage our cost base to prepare for the inevitable recovery of air travel within Europe once an effective COVID-19 vaccine is developed,” said O’Leary. At the same time, he continues to push for the rapid implementation of a European traffic light system to enable safe travel to and from countries and regions where the number of corona infections is below 50 per 100,000 inhabitants.