Ryanair suspends over twenty EX-YU routes
Low cost carrier Ryanair is temporarily suspending 23 routes from cities in the former Yugoslavia next month, the majority of which are from its new base in Zagreb. It comes as the airline heavily downsizes its network across Europe and North Africa next month in the wake of plummeting bookings as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus Covid-19 causes havoc. The carrier has not ruled out extending the suspensions into February and March. A spokesman for Ryanair said, "The impact of government travel restrictions has lowered Ryanair's expected December traffic from between ten to eleven million, to a lower range of between nine and 9.5 million. In response to these restrictions, Ryanair has now cut its January capacity by 33%, reducing its expected January traffic from approximately ten million to between six and seven million”.
The bulk of the suspensions in the region for next month will affect Zagreb as Ryanair’s only year-round base in the former Yugoslavia. The airline will temporarily suspend operations from the Croatian capital to Baden Baden, Basel, Charleroi, Hahn, Malmo, Manchester, Memmingen, Naples, Podgorica, Sandefjord, Sofia and Weeze. Frequencies on other routes from the Croatian capital that will continue to run throughout January have been reduced. Elsewhere, the airline will suspend all of its three operational routes from Niš, all of its services from Banja Luka, with exception to Memmingen, as well as its flights from Podgorica to London Stansted and Krakow. The suspensions will begin to be implemented from January 7 and last until the end of the month.
Despite these suspensions being in place until the end of January, the airline has warned more flight cancellations could be ahead. "In light of the current uncertainty about the Omicron variant and intra-Europe travel restrictions, no schedule cutbacks have yet been decided for February or March 2022. These schedules will be revisited in January as more scientific information becomes available on the Omicron variant, its impact on hospitalisations, European population and/or travel restrictions in February or March", Ryanair said in a statement. The budget carrier has revised its loss forecast in the current financial year ending March 31 and now projects a loss of up to 450 million euros compared to its previous pre-Omicron forecast of a maximum loss of 200 million euros.
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