Ryanair
, the budget airline that bought its rivel Buzz
last month, yesterday is threatening to shut it in two weeks unless two thirds of staff accept redundancy.
The Irish no-frills airline, which bought Buzz from its parent company KLM in January for £15 million, cancelled 15 routes on Wednesday and cancelled tickets of all Buzz passengers booked on any flight after March, claiming that Buzz is in an “extremely precarious” financial position and is losing more than £700,000 a week.

Buzz carries less than 3,000 passengers per employee compared to Ryanair`s figure of almost 10,000 passengers per employee.

No Buzz flights will operate in April and only eight routes may resume in May.
Ryanair claimed that there would be “increased pay and productivity allowances for Buzz remaining 200 staff.”
Ryanair said that passengers who presently have bookings on flights after 1 April 2003 would be offered a full refund of their fare. Passengers will be able to rebook themselves with new tickets, from 12 March 2003, on existing or alternative destinations.

Related stories on ITN:

(31/01/2003) Ryanair Buys Buzz for £15m

——-