Ryanair is to cut a fifth of its flights until October after bookings fell due to new coronavirus travel restrictions.
The airline said it will reduce its flight capacity by 20% in both September and October, after bookings "notably weakened" in recent days.
They say "uncertainty over recent Covid case rates in some EU countries" caused a drop-off in flight bookings over the past ten days.
The cuts will reduce the frequency of flights from countries such as Spain, France and Sweden, it said.
READ MORE: Ryanair says second wave now ‘biggest fear’ after worst quarter in 35 years
A Ryanair spokesman said: “These capacity cuts and frequency reductions for the months of September and October are unavoidable given the recent weakness in forward bookings due to Covid restrictions in a number of EU countries.
“Any affected passengers in September received email notification today advising them of their options.
“Similar communications will be issued to the small number of affected passengers in October later today.
“Over the past two weeks, as a number of EU countries have raised travel restrictions, forward bookings, especially for business travel into September and October, have been negatively affected, and it makes sense to reduce frequencies so that we tailor our capacity to demand over the next two months.”
READ MORE: Travel operators 'continue to break law' over refund failures despite reassurances
Ryanair also said it is reducing flight numbers due to Ireland’s Green List travel guidance, which includes 14-day quarantine for visitors from most other EU countries.
The spokesman added: “We again call on the Irish Government to amend its Green List of travel counties to include those EU countries with lower or similar 14-day Covid case rates, most notably Germany whose Covid case rate is 25% lower than Ireland, and which will allow for some resumption of normal business and economic travel in September and October.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel