Ryanair Holdings plc (LON:RYA) boss Michael O'Leary said media “hysteria” over coronavirus coverage had led to half of passengers not show up for flight to Italy.
With the government warning that fifth of the workforce may be off sick during the peak of a coronavirus epidemic in the UK, the airline boss called for the government to avoid “irrational panic measures”.
Earlier in the week, the Irish carrier said it was planning to cancel up to a quarter of its flights to Italy for three weeks.
Ryanair said 25% of flights to Italy between 17 March and 8 April will be cancelled in response to what it said was a “significant drop in bookings” over the period.
He told Sky News the decision to cancel the Six Nations rugby match between Ireland and Italy in Dublin this weekend was “not sensible or proportionate”.
O'Leary said of the virus outbreak, “I’m reasonably optimistic it will be reasonably short-lived” as he thought the spring and summer weather in Europe will “help to limit the spread” of the virus.
O’Leary said he hoped to see “some of the hysteria taken out of the coverage” of the Covid-19 virus outbreak seen in the last week, expecting that information from the government and World Health Organisation could “help us to fend off some of the frankly lunacy communicated on social media”.