EASYJET has announced it will ground most of its aircraft due to travel restrictions and a collapse in demand caused by the coronavirus.

The Luton-based carrier said it will park "the majority of its fleet" from Tuesday.

It will only run "essential services", which will be up to 10% of its usual capacity and mainly involve flights serving UK airports.

EasyJet pledged to continue to operate rescue flights to repatriate stranded passengers but it expects most of those to be completed by Monday.

Chief executive Johan Lundgren said: "These are unprecedented times for the airline industry.

"We know how important it is for customers to get home and so are continuing to operate rescue flights over the coming days to repatriate them.

"Significantly reducing our flying programme is the right thing to do when many countries have issued advice to their citizens not to travel unless it is essential and the aircraft groundings will also remove significant levels of variable costs at a time when this remains crucial."