Ryanair cuts passenger target and writes off winter travel market

Ryanair has cut its annual passenger target to 50m, a reduction of 10m, as Europe’s biggest carrier expects the winter travel market to be a “write-off”. Ryanair’s previous forecast in July was that it would carry 60m passengers in the year to the end of March 2021. That was a 20m reduction on May’s forecast of 80m, with rising coronavirus case numbers and changing travel restrictions wreaking havoc on customer confidence. “We are guiding now for about 50m passengers for the full year to the end of March,” said CE Michael O’Leary. “I think the winter of 2020 will essentially be a write-off.” O’Leary expects to operate at about 5m passengers per month through the winter, with pricing set to be “aggressively down” to entice travellers. He said Ryanair was looking at closing more bases and withdrawing capacity from countries that do not have the coronavirus pandemic under control. On Tuesday, 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%. “We know our customers are as frustrated as we are with unpredictable travel and quarantine restrictions,” said Johan Lundgren, the CE of easyJet.<br/>