Ryanair bookings slump by 90% for November/December

Europe’s biggest budget airline has seen forward bookings collapse by 90% because of a lack of confidence among passengers, its chief executive has said. Ryanair’s boss, Michael O’Leary, said: “We operated about 50% of our schedule through August, September, we expect to operate only about 40% of our schedule in October, and at the moment November and December look like they’re booking at about 10% of normal levels. That’s a number that’s repeated across most of the airline industry. We have never seen such awful forward bookings.” O’Leary criticised the Department for Transport (DfT) policy of adding and subtracting countries from the “no-go” list each Thursday. “If we stick to the current UK scheme where the government adds Portugal one week, takes it off the next week, adds Greece, takes it off, nobody – businesspeople, people going away for weekends – can make any bookings with confidence, without having their plans disrupted. “The British government doesn’t have any competence, let alone confidence. “Flying is safe, but governments must create an environment where people can make these bookings with some degree of confidence.” The Ryanair CE urged the UK to adopt a European Union plan to classify locations according to risk and permit travel between most locations.<br/>