Ryanair CEO sees travel 'mushrooming' despite COVID-19 restrictions

As the summer holiday season kicks off, the number of passengers hopping on Ryanair RYA.I planes is "mushrooming" despite travel restrictions in place to control the spread of the coronavirus, Group CE Michael O'Leary said Wednesday. O’Leary said bookings had recovered very strongly over the last eight weeks, with particularly high volumes of bookings to Portugal and other summer destinations from Germany, Scandinavia, and the Benelux countries. “Traffic is mushrooming and a lot of that folk are families going on summer holidays to the beaches of Portugal, Spain, Greece and Italy,” O’Leary said, adding the airline was on track to fly 80 to 100m passengers by March 2022. That is up from 27.5m last year but still below pre-pandemic levels of 149 million. O’Leary said Ryanair carried 1.7m passengers in May and said the number was likely to increase to 5m in June and 9m the following month. To boost travel further, O’Leary said fully vaccinated holidaymakers across Europe should be allowed to travel freely.<br/>