Low-cost carriers Ryanair and Wizz Air saw another month of heavy traffic decline in December, as respective passenger numbers fell by 83% and 80% against the same month in 2019.
The airlines are the first European operators to report traffic data for December, a month in which airlines again kept capacity sharply lower amid continued coronavirus-related travel restrictions.
Ryanair carried 1.9 million passengers in December, a drop of 83% on the 11.2 million it transported in the same month in 2019. The decline surpassed the 82% year-on-year fall it recorded in November.
The airline operated 22% of its normal December schedule at a load factor of 73%.
Those December figures round out a terrible year for Ryanair, during which passenger levels fell by two-thirds, to 52.1 million, down from 152.4 million in 2019.
| Airline | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan-Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryanair | Passengers (m) | 0.4 | 4.4 | 7.0 | 5.1 | 4.1 | 2.0 | 1.9 | 52.1 |
| change vs 2019 | -97 | -70% | -53% | -64% | -70% | -82% | -83% | -66% | |
| Load factor | 72% | 73% | 71% | 73% | 73% | 81% | |||
| Wizz Air | Passengers (m) | 0.5 | 1.8 | 2.4 | 1.6 | 1.1 | 0.5 | 0.7 | 16.7 |
| change vs 2019 | -86 | -53% | -41% | -59% | -69% | -84.7% | -80% | -58% | |
| Load factor | 52.2% | 61.0% | 71.0% | 65.0% | 66.0% | 68.2% | 56.0% | 74.8% | |
| Source: FlightGlobal analysis of airline traffic data | |||||||||
Central European budget carrier Wizz carried 666,000 passengers in December, a fall of 80% over the same month in 2019. The carrier’s load factor stood at 56.1% – down some 33 percentage points on the corresponding month and its lowest level since June.
However, the performance in December was a slight improvement on the previous month, where year-on-year traffic was down 85% at 456,000.
Wizz carried 16.6 million passengers across the calendar year, down 58% on the almost 40 million it carried across 2019.
