As the summer holiday season kicks off, the number of passengers hopping on Ryanair planes is "mushrooming" despite travel restrictions in place to control the spread of the COVID-19, group chief executive Michael O'Leary has said.
Recovered Very Strongly
In an interview with Reuters ahead of a news conference in Lisbon, O'Leary said that bookings have recovered very strongly over the last eight weeks, with particularly high volumes of bookings to Portugal and other summer destinations from Germany, Scandinavia, and the Benelux countries.
"Traffic is mushrooming and a lot of that folk are families going on summer holidays to the beaches of Portugal, Spain, Greece and Italy," O'Leary said, adding that the airline is on track to fly 80 to 100 million passengers by March 2022.
That is up from 27.5 million last year but still below pre-pandemic levels of 149 million. O'Leary said that Ryanair carried 1.7 million passengers in May and said that the number is likely to increase to five million in June and nine million the following month.
Delta Variant Impact
Coronavirus cases are on the rise in Britain but also in Portugal, particularly in Lisbon, mostly due to the Delta variant. O'Leary said that the increase in cases will not have a big impact on Ryanair.
"There might be some disruption in Lisbon but we think it will be reasonably small and it won't last long because of the vaccinations taking place all over Europe," O'Leary said.
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