Gregory Polek has spent his entire career in aviation journalism with AIN, starting as a proofreader and assistant to then-managing editor Mary Mahoney in 1995 after serving an internship with&nbsp;New Jersey Monthly&nbsp;magazine and completing his B.A. degree in English/Writing at New Jersey’s William Paterson College. By 1997 Polek accepted a position as an associate editor, covering the regional airline beat for&nbsp;Aviation International News&nbsp;in place of retiring industry veteran Don Anderson. The assignment took Polek across North America and Europe to profile regional airlines varying in size and mission from the likes of floatplane operators Kenmore Air and Chalk’s Ocean Airways to regional jet operators such as SkyWest and American Eagle. Today, in his dual role as Air Transport Editor and International Airshow Editor, Polek writes, edits, and manages AIN’s commercial aviation content while overseeing each of the company’s daily international air show publications in Paris, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai. Most recently Polek has assumed oversight of daily coverage of the Helicopter Association International’s annual Heli-Expo convention.

Senior Editor

Gregory Polek

Ryanair on Thursday said it will further cut its flight schedules from January through March in reaction to newly announced Covid lockdowns in Ireland, the UK, and a number of other EU countries. Europe’s largest low-cost airline now expects its January traffic to fall to under 1.25 million passengers and that the new Covid restrictions could result in traffic falling to as little as 500,000 passengers in February and in March.

 


The service cuts, scheduled to start January 21, will result in “few, if any, flights” operated to and from Ireland or the UK until the governments jettison what the airline calls “draconian” travel restrictions.

 


These new cuts will reduce the airline's fiscal year 2021 traffic forecast from “below 35 million” to between 26 million and 30 million passengers, it projected. Ryanair added that it does not expect cuts and further traffic reductions to materially affect its net loss for the fiscal year ending March 31 because it already expected many of the routes to lose money.

 


“Ryanair calls on the Irish and UK governments to accelerate the slow pace of vaccine rollouts, and in particular, calls on the Irish government to explain why Denmark, with a population of five million, has vaccinated 40,000 citizens…whereas Ireland, with a similar five million population, has vaccinated just 4,000, a vaccination rate that is 10 times slower than that of Denmark,” said the airline in a statement.

 


“The WHO has previously confirmed that governments should do everything possible to avoid brutal lockdowns because lockdowns do not get rid of the virus,” said a Ryanair spokesman. “Ireland’s Covid-19 travel restrictions are already the most stringent in Europe, and so these new flight restrictions are inexplicable and ineffective when Ireland continues to operate an open border between the Republic and the North of Ireland.”

News about commercial airlines, including regulations, aircraft orders, safety, acquisitions, and mergers.

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