Ryanair chief executive, Michael O’Leary, has said the airline will not begin to fly again if it is forced to leave the middle seat empty to comply with “idiotic” in-flight social distancing rules.

“Either the government pays for the middle seat or we won’t fly,” he told the Financial Times. “We can’t make money on 66 percent load factors. Even if you do that, the middle seat doesn’t deliver any social distancing, so it’s kind of an idiotic idea that doesn’t achieve anything anyway.”

O’Leary said that Ryanair had already told the Irish government that if it imposes the restriction, then “either the government pays for the middle seat or we won’t fly”.

The Dublin-based carrier’s business model relies on flying as frequently as possible, stripping out costs and running an extremely high “load factor”, the aviation industry term for how full planes are.

Like the rest of the industry, Ryanair’s flights have been almost wiped out by the virus. As of March, Ryanair was operating fewer than 20 flights a day — less than 1% of its usual daily average of 2,500.

O’Leary said the airline expected to run about 40% of its flights in July should air travel resume by then, and he estimated that about 50% to 60% of the seats would be filled.

He said he expected the airline to run about 80% of its flights by September — but said these plans would be ruined if the airline couldn’t fill the middle seat.