Coronavirus: Ryanair severely cuts flights to and from Italy

Ryanair will be running a severely reduced schedule of international flights to and from Italy as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak.

The airline will be suspending all Italian domestic flights to/from Bergamo, Malpensa, Parma, and Treviso from tomorrow, Tuesday, and from Thursday, international flights will also be reduced.

The international flights to/from the mentioned regions will only operate between Fridays and Mondays up until April and any routes with multi-daily frequencies will be restricted to one flight per day.

"While inbound traffic to northern Italy has suffered large numbers of no-shows over the past week, there are many thousands of non-Italian visitors currently in Lombardy and other affected regions who are scheduled to return home, and Ryanair must continue to run this restricted four-day week schedule to repatriate these non-Italian citizens," the airline said in a statement on Monday. 

This is further to the news that Malta Air, a Ryanair subsidiary, has suspended flights to Bergamo and Treviso from Malta, starting on Monday.

The region of Lombardy and surrounding areas have been designated as 'Orange Zones' by the Italian government, where a lockdown is being enforced.

Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta and Romania will be affected by the restriction to flights to this region.

"Ryanair continues to comply fully with WHO and national government guidance and travel bans. The situation is changing on a daily basis, and all passengers on flights affected by travel bans or cancellations, are receiving emails and are being offered flights transfers, full refunds or travel credits," Ryanair said.

The airline apologised to all affected customers for the disruption. All passengers have received email notices of these cancellations and changes.