US and European airlines cut schedules as passengers fail to return

US and European airlines warned Wednesday of grim outlooks for the coming months, cutting schedules as passengers continue to avoid air travel during the pandemic. Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost airline, reduced its forecast for passengers it expects to carry in the fiscal year to March, as the carrier warned this winter will be “a write-off”. Finnair, Finland’s flagship airline, said it would operate no more than 80 flights daily in October compared with the 200 previously planned. In the US, United said its capacity would fall 70% compared with Q3 2019. The company’s earlier guidance was a fall of 65%. Revenue, too, will be lower than executives forecast: down 85% from the $11.4b a year earlier, not 83%. Ryanair now expects to carry 50m passengers in the 12 months to the end of March, down from the 60m projected in July. The airline had forecast more than 150m passengers before the pandemic struck. United said it would launch seven new long-haul routes from the US over the next year: two from mainland cities to Hawaii, and five connecting diaspora populations to destinations in India and Africa. “We’re really focused on rethinking the network,” said Patrick Quayle, United’s vice-president of international network and alliances. “We’re not just looking at adding everything back prior to the way it was before coronavirus.” Given United’s hubs in cities with significant immigrant populations, the airline had long wanted to fly from the US to Johannesburg in South Africa, New Delhi and Bangalore in India, Lagos in Nigeria, and Accra, the capital of Ghana, Quayle said. However, before the pandemic forced cuts to other international routes, it lacked planes in the fleet to do it. “This is about implementing our business plan at a time when [visiting friends and family] travel is quite robust,” he said. “We have the aircraft right now, so we’re going to put the markets into play.”<br/>