Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 28 July 2020

Special Committee on Covid-19 Response

Covid-19: Impact on Aviation (resumed)

Mr. Eddie Wilson:

Ryanair has brought its schedules back to 40% in July and 60% for August. We hope we will fly approximately 70% of the 40% in July and 70% of the 60% in August. However, the prospect for the winter is completely uncertain. Yesterday, we guided to the market that we are going to fly 60 million passengers this year instead of the 150 million we had previously indicated. That 60 million may well be on the down side. As I said, we are going to have countries vying for capacity. People really need to wake up to that reality. Our attendance here today is not like the representatives of some localised industry coming in and saying they are in trouble. Airlines can move to different countries and Ireland is one country in the European Union that needs airline connectivity probably more than any other. We all remember what it was like before we had that connectivity and it will be gone unless we do something now. If the Government does not act, the traffic will go. There are 140,000 jobs in aviation that depend directly on that connectivity and another 350,000 indirectly dependent on it. We need to get real about this because if we do not incentivise aviation activity, it will go elsewhere.

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