A number of US and European airlines announced major reductions in schedule as passengers demand remains weak in the face of COVID 19.
In the US, United said Q3 capacity would be 70% lower than the same period last year. While in Europe LCC Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost airline, cut its annual passenger target to 50 million, a reduction of 10 million, as Europe’s biggest carrier expects the winter travel market to be a “write-off”.
“We are guiding now for about 50 million passengers for the full year to the end of March,” said Michael O’Leary, the chief executive, in an interview with Reuters. “I think the winter of 2020 will essentially be a write-off.
Finnair said it would operate no more than 80 flights daily in October compared with the 200 previously planned.
A day before, EasyJet said it would cut flights after the UK government announced more quarantine measures. Just over a month after expanding its flight schedule to 1,000 flights a day after better than expected demand as travel restrictions were eased, the airline expects to fly slightly less than the 40% of planned capacity in the fourth quarter of the year. EasyJet’s flight schedule is likely to be reduced by 2%.
On Monday TUI cancelled holidays to Crete, Santorini, Zakynthos and Mykonos because of the UK quarantine regime. While last week Jet2, announced that it would be axing all its summer flights and holidays to Spain and Croatia for the same reason.
Ryanair’s chief executive Michael O’Leary was scathing of the UK’s quarantine regime in a series of media interviews, where said the country’s government had been “pretty poor” in aspects of dealing with COVID 19.
“They were late into lockdown, they were late into testing, they were late into face masks, now they’re pooh-poohing testing. Testing is the only way forward here,” he told the BBC.