Flight companies are slowly flying again after a 2 months break.

Flight companies are slowly getting out of the corona coma. After a 2 months break EasyJet and Ryanair are offering flights again from Schiphol airport.

Flight companies – On the 30th of March Ryanair and EasyJet stopped flying in all of Europe. The reason for this was because people were afraid to travel and countries closed their borders which made flying impossible. Since 1st of July Ryanair and EasyJet have slowly started to fly again. Schiphol is offering flights again for both flight companies to various countries including: Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and Greece.

Lower prices to earn the trust of travellers again

The financial status of flight companies are slowly recovering and flights are starting to rise up again. Unfortunately this does not happen without a cost. The flying companies have to get travellers again and they do this by offering plane tickets for low prices.

“The only way we can recover is by setting much lower prices for 12 to 24 months. Said, Michael O’Reily, manager of Ryanair. That’s why we need to cut costs and cut pay,” ‘’It comes as hundreds of pilots face a 20% pay cut, in efforts to prevent 3,000 redundancies.

Lower capacity than usual this Summer

Flight companies are expecting a much lower occupation in taken flight seats than normal.

‘’In July we travel up to 68 percent of the destinations compared to our norm. Said William Vet, chairman at EasyJet Holland. In August the flight destinations will increase to above 90 percent. But flights will be less regular. In terms of capacity, we are at 30 percent of what we normally do this summer. As demand grows, we will scale up. Every day we get a better understanding of people’s need to fly. But we don’t know yet how it will develop.”

The corona crisis determines air travel for upcoming months

The discussions surrounding corona measures in air travel lowers the enthusiasm among travelers. For two months, due to the coronavirus, all flights were cancelled which caused confusion and grief among customers. For some it took weeks to return to their home country and due to financial instability at flight companies customers were confused about compensation. Claim24 Director of Operations, Joe Kuijpers can empathize on this: ‘’We have seen a high increase in customers lately, a rate of around 50%. Most issues were related to the coronavirus. People were confused and worried.’’

There is also a large group of consumers who do not want to fly yet, because the corona pandemic is not under control. Flight companies have made every effort to limit the risks as much as possible with mouth masks, virus filters and extra cleaning already results in a major risk reduction. Furthermore the crew is instructed to place passengers as far apart as possible.

With 30 percent capacity, flight companies will not achieve a high occupancy rate in the coming months.

Europe is loosening the corona restriction and various borders are opening again. Click here to see which borders will open again for the holidays.