RYANAIR IS TO cut 250 jobs across its bases in Ireland, the UK, Spain and Poland.

The company said the employees “will not be required” when its offices reopen from 1 June and confirmed that compulsory redundancies will make up “a small number” of the jobs losses. 

The other job cuts will come from a combination of “probation/fixed term contract ends and resignations”.

The airline is operating at less than 1% of its normal flight schedules across April, May and June and earlier this week confirmed plans to resume 40% of flights from July.

The airline’s people director Darrell Hughes said in a statement this morning that it is: “a very painful time for Ryanair, our crews and our people supporting operations from our Dublin, Stansted, Madrid and Wroclaw offices. 

“While we expect to reopen our offices from 1 June, we will not require the same number of support team members in a year when we will carry less than 100 million passengers, against an original budget of 155 million,” he said.

“Regrettably, we will now have a small number of compulsory redundancies in Dublin, Stansted, Madrid and Wroclaw to right-size our support teams for a year when we will carry less than 100 million passengers due to the Covid-19 crisis.

These job losses were communicated to individual team members this week, and they will not be returning to work in our Dublin, Stansted, Madrid or Wroclaw offices when they reopen on 1 June.

“We are continuing to meet our pilot and cabin crew unions across Europe to finalise up to 3,000 job cuts and 20% pay cuts as we return to approximately 40% of our normal flight schedules from July onwards,” he added. 

Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary said earlier this month that up to 3,000 jobs could be cut as the airline responds to the financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

This week, the European Commission said that airlines must give passengers refunds for cancelled flights and that vouchers alone aren’t sufficient.

O’Leary has said the scale of the mass flight cancellation has been the main factor in the delay in providing refunds to customers for cancelled flights.