Busy Ryanair stops Eurocontrol flight numbers falling below ‘low’ scenario in early February

The number of flights in European airspace is tracking Eurocontrol’s ‘low’ scenario so far in February, despite Ryanair operating at above pre-pandemic levels, as the region’s response to the Omicron variant of Covid-19 hits the recovery trajectory. Traffic in the week of 3-9 February was at 68% of 2019 levels, the European air traffic manager said on 10 February, against a ‘low’ scenario of 67% for the whole month, which was projected pre-Omicron in October last year. Low-cost airline flights were down 39% for the week and network airline operations down 41%, with higher business aviation, cargo and non-scheduled flights versus 2019 levels offsetting those declines to an extent. Of the airlines tracked, Ryanair’s aggressive reintroduction of capacity means it continues to have an outsized impact on the overall numbers, operating 1% more flights on 3-9 February than it did in the same period of 2019. Ryanair’s average of 1,920 flights accounted for around 11% of the average daily total of 17,719 for the Eurocontrol region. Had Ryanair’s flight numbers been down in line with its peers’, the overall number of flights in the region on 3-9 February would have fallen below Eurocontrol’s ‘low’ scenario for the whole month. The Irish carrier’s flight numbers were almost double the daily average of 1,003 operated by the next-busiest carrier on 3-9 February, Turkish Airlines, whose numbers were down 20% from 2019. In third place, EasyJet operated an average of 800 daily flights on 3-9 February, a fall of 46% from 2019, followed by Lufthansa at 720 flights (-50%), Air France at 651 flights (-41%), KLM at 559 flights (-22%), British Airways at 410 flights (-53%), Wizz Air at 355 flights (-22%), Pegasus at 352 flights (-19%) and SAS at 348 flights (-56%).<br/>