Ryanair has said that it now expects the newly announced Covid lockdowns in Ireland, the UK, and a small number of other EU countries this week, will materially reduce its flight schedules and traffic forecast through Jan, Feb & Mar.

The airliner now expects its Jan traffic to fall to under 1.25m passengers, and that new Covid restrictions could also reduce Feb and Mar traffic to as little as 500,000 passengers each month.

In response, it says it will significantly cut its flight schedules from Thurs 21 Jan, which will result in few, if any, flights being operated to/from Ireland or the UK from the end of Jan until such time as these draconian travel restrictions are removed. All customers affected by these further flight cancellations and further travel restrictions will receive emails advising them of their entitlements of free moves and/or refunds later today.

These new cutbacks will reduce full year traffic forecast from currently “below 35m” to between 26m to 30m passengers.

The Company said it does not expect these flight cuts and further traffic reductions will materially affect its net loss for the year to 31 March 2021 since many of these flights would have been loss making.

The airline calls on the Irish and UK Governments to accelerate the slow pace of vaccine rollouts, and in particular, calls on the Irish Government to explain why Denmark, with a population of 5m, has vaccinated 40,000 citizens by Wed 6th Jan, whereas Ireland with a similar 5m pop., has vaccinated just 4,000, a vaccination rate that is 10 times slower than that of Denmark.

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