Ryanair has cancelled scheduled flights to and from Italy in light of the recent lockdown of more than a quarter of the country’s population in response to COVID-19.
Earlier, British Airways and EasyJet also cut flights and offered refunds or rebooking services.
An advisory change from the British Foreign Office advised against all but essential travel to regions operating coronavirus quarantine restrictions.
Ryanair will operate a maximum of one service a day, from Fridays to Mondays, on its routes from the region. It will also suspend all Italian domestic flights to and from Bergamo, Malpensa, Parma and Treviso airports, which are located in the lockdown area.
Flights are free to continue and foreign nationals in Italy are free to leave despite the restrictions preventing locals from leaving the affected provinces. However, some countries such as Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta and Romania were restricting fights from northern Italy.
British Airways has cancelled dozens of UK flights to and from Venice and Milan and is reviewing its schedules for the coming weeks after hundreds of cancellations.
EasyJet has advised it is also reviewing its schedules for Milan, Verona and Venice.
A spokesman said, “We expect to continue to reduce the number of flights in and out of Milan Malpensa, Milan Linate, Venice and Verona airports in the period up to 3 April and will provide a further update on our schedule in due course.
“Whilst these circumstances are outside of our control, we apologise to all affected customers for any inconvenience caused.”
These announcements come after a range of European airlines continue to cancel flights around the world not only to Italy, including Lufthansa cancelling flights to Israel last week, Scandinavian Airlines and Norwegian Air announcing cuts to flights to Milan, as well as numerous airlines cancelling flights to China and east Asia.
