Ryanair has announced that it plans to return to 40% of normal flight schedules from Wednesday 1 July, subject to government restrictions on intra-EU flights being lifted, as well as ‘effective public health measures’ being put in place at airports.
The budget airline says it will operate a daily flight schedule of almost 1,000 flights across 90% of its ‘pre-Covid-19 route network’.
Since the Coronavirus flight restrictions in mid-March, Ryanair has been operating a skeleton daily schedule of 30 flights between Ireland, the UK and Europe. From July, Ryanair will restart flying from most of its 80 bases across Europe.
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The airline has released details of the health measures it is putting in place, as well as a video to encourage passengers to undergo temperature checks at airport entry, in addition to wearing face masks at all times in the terminal and on board aircraft.
As a temporary further public health measure – and whilst EU countries gradually emerge from their respective lockdowns – the airline has also stated that it will require all passengers flying in July and August to fill in details (at the point of check in) of how long their planned visit will be, and also their address while visiting another EU country. They state that and this information will be provided to EU governments to help monitor any isolation regulations they require of visitors on intra-EU flights.
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Ryanair’s CEO Eddie Wilson said, ‘After 4 months, it is time to get Europe flying again so we can reunite friends and families, allow people to return to work, and restart Europe’s tourism industry, which provides so many millions of jobs.’
He added that 1 July was the most ‘practical date to resume normal flight schedules’, in order to allow ‘friends and families to reunite’, and also allow ‘those tourism based economies such as Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, France and others, to recover what is left of this year’s tourism season.’
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