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Limited travel: Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary
Photo: JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP
The rapid spread of the Coronavirus variant Omikron thwarted the business plans of the low-cost airline Ryanair.
Because of new travel restrictions in Europe and a slump in bookings, the management around CEO Michael O'Leary expects more than twice as much loss in the current financial year as last.
How things will continue in February and March has not yet been decided, the Irish company announced on Wednesday shortly before the market closed.
Nevertheless, the Ryanair share went up again this Thursday after slight price losses in the evening.
Up to 450 million euros in the red
At the beginning of November, O'Leary had promised investors a loss of 100 to 200 million euros.
But in the past few weeks, many governments have imposed new travel restrictions to curb the spread of the Omikron variant, which has already hit the UK hard in Europe.
In Germany, Great Britain has been a virus variant area since Monday.
Vaccinated and convalescents also have to be in quarantine for 14 days after entering the country.
In addition, only German citizens and people with German residence are allowed to enter the country from Great Britain.
Air traffic between the EU and Morocco has even stopped.
For the current financial year until the end of March 2022, the Ryanair management now expects a deficit of between 250 and 450 million euros due to these restrictions.
Flight availability drops by a third
The short-term bookings for Christmas and the turn of the year have also decreased significantly, reported Ryanair.
The top of the group expects a total of only 9 to 9.5 million instead of 10 to 11 million passengers for December.
According to the company, there will only be 6 to 7 million passengers in January.
Ryanair is cutting its flight offer for this month by a third.
As a result, Europe's largest low-cost airline is also moving the previous goal of more than 100 million passengers in the current financial year out of reach.
The actual number will be below 100 million, it was now said.
How high the annual loss is, however, depends heavily on the further development of the pandemic.
mamk / dpa