Ryanair have been forced to cancel a third of their scheduled January flights due ongoing uncertainty caused by travel restrictions.
The budget airline announced the cancellations in the wake of plummeting bookings as the omicron variant causes havoc across Europe.
The reduction of thousands of scheduled Ryanair flights by a third has been prompted by travel bans by France and Germany on UK visitors and Morocco suspending flights to and from the EU.
A spokesman for Ryanair said these decisions had hit the airline hard, saying: "The impact of these recent government travel restrictions, in particular last weekend's ban on UK arrivals into France and Germany, and the suspension of all EU flights to/from Morocco has lowered Ryanair's expected December traffic from 10-11m, to a lower range of between 9m-9.5m.
"In responding to these restrictions, Ryanair has now cut its January capacity by 33 per cent, reducing its expected January traffic from approximately 10m to 6-7m."
However, despite these restrictions being in place until various points in January, the airline hasn't ruled out more flight cancellations.
A spokesman told MyLondon : "In light of the current uncertainty about the Omicron variant and intra Europe travel restrictions, no schedule cutbacks have yet been decided for February or March 2022.
"These schedules will be revisited in January as more scientific information becomes available on the Omicron variant, its impact on hospitalisations, European population and/or travel restrictions in February or March."
