A Ryanair cabin crew member looks out the window at Ryanair planes.
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LONDON – Ryanair expects this fiscal year to be “the most challenging” in its 35-year history, the company said on Monday, as governments tighten travel restrictions in an effort to contain new variants of Covid- 19.
The low-cost airline is on the way to a net loss of between 850 million euros ($ 1.03 billion) and 950 million euros for the fiscal year 2021, which ended in March. She reported a net loss of 306 million euros in the three months ending in December.
“Covid-19 continues to wreak havoc across the industry,” said Ryanair in a statement. He added that Christmas and New Year traffic “was severely affected” by travel bans imposed on UK travelers in late December.
Several European governments have decided to impose restrictions on flights leaving the United Kingdom before Christmas, after news that a new Covid-19 variant identified in the county was spreading rapidly. This contributed to an 83% drop in traffic in December for Ryanair.
The EU now needs to accelerate the pace of its implementation program to keep up with the UK’s performance.
The carrier “expects Covid’s latest blockages and test requirements before arrival to significantly reduce flight times and traffic until Easter”
The new year saw European governments extend or introduce blockages as they faced a sharp rise in new infections. More recently, countries in the region have discouraged non-essential travel as they sought to reduce the number of daily cases. It is currently unclear when countries will begin to reopen their economies and will go so far as to encourage travel abroad.
However, European governments are in the process of vaccinating their populations in the hope that this will enable them to return to normal daily life more quickly. However, the launch of the vaccine in Europe faces problems of production, supply and bureaucracy.
“We feel some consolation with the success of the UK vaccine program, which aims to vaccinate almost 50% of the UK population (30 million) by the end of March. The EU now needs to accelerate the slow pace of its program implementation to match to the UK’s performance, “he said to Ryanair on Monday.
Ryanair’s shares have fallen about 12% since the beginning of the year.