UK Edition
Ryanair plans to return two-fifths of its normal flight schedule to the skies from the beginning of July with passengers encouraged to wear face masks and undergo temperature checks before boarding planes.
Queuing for toilets will be prohibited on board, the carrier said, but toilet access will be made available to individual passengers upon request. Cabin crew will also be required to wear face coverings.
The move means the low-cost airline will operate more than 1,000 daily flights as it seeks to save at least part of its busiest season.
Eddie Wilson, Ryanair's chief executive, said: "After four months, it is time to get Europe flying again so we can reunite friends and families, allow people to return to work, and restart Europe's tourism industry, which provides so many millions of jobs.
"With more than six weeks to go to July 1, Ryanair believes this is the most practical date to resume normal flight schedules, so that we can allow friends and families to reunite, commuters to go back to work, and allow those tourism-based economies such as Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, France and others, to recover what is left of this year's tourism season."
It comes after airline bosses slammed the Government's decision to implement a 14-day quarantine for arrivals to the UK.
Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways parent IAG, said the decision would make a mockery of attempts to restart the economy, adding that the industry had “zero likelihood of improving in the short term”.
Ryanair said it will also require all passengers in July and August to fill out a form detailing the length of their planned visit and where they will stay, information that will be provided to EU governments to monitor quarantine regulations.
The Irish airline said it will restart flying from most if its 80 bases across Europe as it looks to operate a wide number of routes rather than a high frequency of services across a small selection of routes.
The airline has only been operating a "skeleton schedule" of 30 flights per day between Ireland, the UK and Europe since mid-March. Last week, it reported a 99pc slump in passenger traffic in April.
Earlier this month, Ryanair announced plans to axe 3,000 jobs as it wrestled with the fallout from the pandemic. Europe's largest airline said at the time it does not expect pre-crisis passenger demand to return for at least two years.
Analysts at Peel Hunt said: "This increase in the flight schedules is encouraging but we are wary about the level of demand from UK passengers given the divergence of quarantine policies expected to be introduced in the UK later in May, just as they are starting to be relaxed in EU-27."
Shares gained 2.8pc to €9.12. The stock is trading about two-fifths below its pre-crisis level.