What's next for Ryanair funiculars from Poland? Until March is uncertain

Low-cost airline Ryanair has made changes to the communications network from Poland – from January 2022, the carrier will remove at least 70 routes, and they will be excluded from the schedule for about 3-4 weeks.

The cuts to Ryanair’s reservation system affect all twelve airports in Poland where the Irish carrier is based. A total of about 70 routes have been suspended – at the moment from the beginning of January through February.

Roads may not return quickly

Airports in Wroclaw and Pozna will lose the most connections – with 13 routes. Krakow Airport and Warsaw-Modlin Airport will also suffer, as they will be denied 11 and 10 connections, respectively.

Most of the routes missing in the network are flights to the UK, which may be linked to plans for strict closures on the islands and mandatory testing even for vaccinated people.

However, the situation is changing dynamically Further cuts and extension of the suspension period cannot be ruled out. The carrier states that it is too early to say what the February and March schedules will look like.

The cause of outages in the communications network is the most contagious type of coronavirus, Omikron, which was discovered last month.

O’Leary opposed government restrictions

As a result of the novel coronavirus variant, Ryanair more than doubled its annual loss forecast and lowered its January traffic estimate by 33%. This situation is blamed on travel restrictions imposed in France, Germany and Morocco after the launch of the Omikron variant.

Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair, has already proven to be a fierce critic of any transport restrictions. “I see no excuse for the British government, which requires vaccinated people to be tested before and within two days of arriving in the UK. This is ridiculous!“- claimed.

Interestingly, O’Leary is also against access to public places for unvaccinated people – also on planes. “If you haven’t been vaccinated, you shouldn’t be hospitalized, you shouldn’t be able to fly on planes, you shouldn’t use public transportation, and you shouldn’t go to the local supermarket or pharmacy.“He said.

The new mutation changes the prognosis

Like it or not, airlines have had to adapt to new legal regulations, which will severely impact annual stats. So Ryanair’s latest forecast assumes that in January – as previously assumed – not 10 million passengers will be carried, but 6-7 million passengers will be carried across Europe.

As a result of the cuts, Ryanair, which only last month announced its first quarterly profit since the start of the pandemic, expects to incur a net loss of between €250 million and €450 million over the 12 months ending March 2022.

It is also as a result of previous expectations of losses ranging between 100 and 200 million euros.

“These numbers are extremely sensitive to any other positive or negative news about COVID-19,” the lines wrote in the statement.

Ryanair, the largest airline in Europe and Poland in terms of the number of passengers carried, expects that during the year until the end of March 2022, it will carry less than 100 million passengers, compared to previous forecasts that assumed a slight surplus of this number.