Ryanair launches first buy one get one free sale
Ryanair has launched its first "buy one, get one free" sale in a bid to boost flagging passenger numbers.
Customers who book a flight before midnight on Thursday for travel up to December 14 on 1,600 routes will get a second ticket at no extra cost.
The move follows the airline's decision to further reduce operations due to coronavirus travel restrictions.
Its capacity in October will be 40pc of 2019 levels, compared with the 50pc it previously announced.
Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary said demand for future bookings was terrible.
"Into November and December our forward bookings are running at around 10pc - that's about a quarter of where they would normally be at this time of the year," he told Sky News.
"We can't rule out job losses but in Ryanair we're certainly desperately working with our people to prevent them."
Mr O’Leary issued a sharp rebuke of Boris Johnson’s resistance to implementing a testing regime, accusing the Government of mismanagement and failing the industry.
He told ITV's Peston: "The example we point to all the time is that the Italians and the Germans have been allowing flights, intra-EU air flights, since the first of July and have managed to keep their Covid case rates down around 20 per 100,000.
"In the UK … the Government is mismanaging the situation. They've limited the number of flights people can take and yet you've seen huge outbreaks.
"Boris Johnson promised us world-leading test and tracing and like most of his promises it's turned out to be vacuous and completely undeliverable."
