Italy’s national civil aviation authority ENAC threatened on Wednesday to suspend Ryanair’s permit to fly in the country over alleged non-compliance with coronavirus safety rules.
It accused the Irish low-cost airline of “repeated violations of the Covid-19 health regulations currently in force and imposed by the Italian government to protect the health of passengers”.
“Not only is the obligation to distance passengers not respected, but the conditions for making an exception to that rule are also being ignored”, it said in a statement.
While airlines flying to and from Italy are allowed to fill planes to capacity, they are supposed to enforce social distancing before and after take-off, including during boarding, at gates, and on shuttle buses carrying passengers to and from the terminal.
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They must also ensure that staff and passengers wear face masks throughout flights, changing them every four hours on longer journeys.
If Ryanair continued to break the rules ENAC said it would “suspend all air transport activities at national airports, requiring the carrier to re-route all passengers already in possession of tickets”.
Italy was the first European Union country to be seriously affected by the pandemic, which has officially killed over 35,000, but its contagion rate is currently far below levels seen in other parts of the bloc.
