TICKET sales have slumped at Ryanair since the London bombings, with foreign bookings for flights bound for the capital down by up to a third.

The budget airline is heavily discounting fares for August, the peak holiday month when normally it charges a premium.

Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s chief executive, said that bookings were “down just under 10 per cent system-wide” in the first four days after the suicide attacks. That equated to about 8,000 bookings a day. By Monday night the downturn had cost the airline almost £1 million in lost revenue.

Mr O’Leary said: “A large proportion of that is people visiting London.” On a normal day about a fifth of Ryanair’s 100,000 daily passengers originate in Europe and travel to Stansted, Gatwick or Luton airports. Ryanair said yesterday that it would be selling a third of its capacity over the next three months, or three million seats, at £1 or €1 plus taxes.

Mr O’Leary said: “This is in response to last week’s bombings because it’s important to keep people flying.”

Early estimates have put the cost of the bombings to London’s high street shops at £200 million. SPSL, a company that measures customer movement in shops, said that Central London had experienced a

77 per cent drop in activity last Thursday, the biggest fall since records began, although retail activity seems to have rebounded since then.

The World Markets Research Centre, an advisory body, said that the knock-on effect on transport, retail sales, tourism and entertainment would cost the economy between £2 billion and £3 billion.

However, Jonathan Loynes, chief UK economist at Capital Economics, said: “The economic effects of non-economic events are much often smaller than people think at the time.”

The World Travel and Tourism Council Crisis Committee predicted that the bombings would reduce the number of visitors to Britain this year by about 600,000 from the previous forecast of 31 million, a drop of 1.9 per cent.

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