RyanAir will be suspending 33% of its January international flights for a three-week period, according to a RyanAir spokesperson’s announcement of the decision.
According to the spokesperson, government restrictions in response to Covid-19 are largely the culprit to blame for the mass cancellation of flight routes in January, just as it was in December 2021.
“The impact of these recent Government travel restrictions, in particular last weekend’s ban on UK arrivals into France and Germany, and the suspension of all EU flights to/from Morocco, has lowered Ryanair’s expected December traffic from between 10 to 11 million, to a lower range of nine to 9.5 million. In responding to these restrictions, Ryanair has now cut its January capacity by 33 percent, reducing its expected January traffic from approximately 10 million to 6-7 million.”
The flight cancellations by the low-cost airline are largely aimed at Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Morocco but are not exclusive to these countries.
In Denmark, 28 of its 59 routes, to include Copenhagen and Aalborg, were cut for three weeks from 10 January 2022.
Flights to and from Morocco were already cancelled, however, by the Moroccan government’s pause of all flights in and out of country until 1 February 2022.
At the time of the government’s cancellations of all flights, Jason McGuiness, RyanAir Director of Commerce announced “We deeply regret this disruption to our passengers from these cancelled Morocco flights until February 1, 2022, due to a lack of clarity from the Moroccan authorities on what to expect beyond their initial travel ban ruling to December 13. Ryanair regrets the unnecessary disruption caused and apologizes to all our customers for this outcome, which is entirely beyond our control.”
As for the UK, popular flights routes from London and Liverpool have been put on hold for three weeks as well.
Recent government restrictions in Europe and the corporate responses to those restrictions are largely due to fears about the Omnicron variant of Covid-19.
To be fair, flight route cancellations in Europe do not matter as much as they might once have because comparatively much fewer people on the continent can legally fly now amid government restrictions on travel and freedom of movement in the EU and Schengen Area.
