Many countries around us are still in lockdown, which has enormous consequences for aviation. Airline Ryanair reports that they have to adjust their flight schedule due to the current lockdown in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Ryanair expects that due to the lockdown in January the number of passengers will drop to less than 1,25 million passengers and even drop to 500.000 in February and March. This affects the expected financial year and is therefore adjusted downwards from 35 million passengers to 26 to 30 million passengers. The flight schedules will be adjusted from 21 January. This will result in almost no flights to and from Ireland and the UK operated by Ryanair from the end of January until the restriction is lifted. They hope that the Irish and British governments will accelerate the roll-out of the vaccine, Ryanair said on their website.

A spokesperson for Ryanair said:

“The WHO has previously confirmed that governments should do everything possible to prevent brutal lockdowns, because lockdowns 'do not remove the virus'. Ireland's Covid-19 travel restrictions are already the strictest in Europe, so these new flight restrictions are inexplicable and ineffective if Ireland continues to maintain an open border between the Republic and the north of Ireland. As Ireland's third lockdown will not eliminate the Covid virus, there is a duty of the Irish government to speed up the introduction of vaccines, and the fact that the Danish government, with a comparable population of 5 million, is already 10 times more has vaccinated citizens than Ireland shows that emergency measures are needed to speed up Covid vaccinations in Ireland.

NPHET (the Irish Public Health Team), which we believe has mismanaged many aspects of the Irish Covid approach (face masks, test & trace, international travel, care homes and meat factories) should now issue a daily report on the number of vaccinations in Ireland, and explain why they still lag behind the vaccination coverage of other EU countries of similar size. Vaccinations instead of lockdowns are the way out of this Covid-19 crisis, and the sooner NPHET takes action to speed up vaccine roll-out in Ireland, the better ”.

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