Ryanair (Dublin) grew quickly by serving under-served, sometimes remote airports near major metropolitan airports. That strategy seems to be changing as it enters two new major airport markets.
Ryanair today announced it will open its second Belgian base (62 bases in total) at Brussels (Zaventem) in February 2014 with four based aircraft and 10 new routes to Alicante, Barcelona, Ibiza, Lisbon, Malaga, Palma de Mallorca, Porto, Rome, Valencia and Venice.
Previously Ryanair had served the Brussels area via under-served and cheaper Charleroi Airport, 29 miles south of central Brussels. The company will continue to serve both Belgian airports.
10 NEW ZAVENTEM ROUTES
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Alicante
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14 weekly
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Barcelona
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42 weekly
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Ibiza
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14 weekly
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Lisbon
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28 weekly
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Malaga
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14 weekly
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Palma
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14 weekly
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Porto
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14 weekly
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Rome
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28 weekly
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Valencia
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14 weekly
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Venice
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14 weekly
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In other news, Ryanair, also announced it will be allocating six Boeing 737-800 aircraft to a new base in Rome Fiumicino Airport, and launching three new Southern Italy domestic routes with multiple daily flights to Catania and Palermo (in Sicily) and Lamezia (in Calabria) with these daily flights commencing on December 18. Ryanair also confirmed the six aircraft allocated to this new Rome Fiumicino base will also offer daily business flights to Brussels (Zaventum) and Barcelona (El Prat).
These three new domestic routes from Rome Fiumicino will bring to nine the number of domestic routes served by Ryanair from Rome, (Alghero, Bari, Brindisi, Cagliari, Comiso and Trapani are already served from Rome Ciampino). Ryanair confirmed that over the next 12 months, it will move many of these Italian domestic routes from Ciampino to Fiumicino which will be its main airport for domestic services to/from Rome. This will free up slots at Rome Ciampino thereby enabling Ryanair to add more international flights and more new routes to its schedule at Rome Ciampino, the preferred Rome airport for travellers to/from international destinations.
Ryanair also confirmed that it will increase these daily frequencies if Alitalia cuts back. Ryanair has also offered to use its low fare flights to feed into Alitalia’s international network to/from Rome Fiumicino. Ryanair has for example offered to carry Alitalia passengers at one-way fares from just €50 which will enable Alitalia to significantly reduce the costs of its feed traffic on these domestic routes to Rome Fiumicino. Ryanair has also requested a meeting with Alitalia to examine any other opportunities which may exist for co-operating with and assisting Alitalia in its current restructuring.
Copyright Photo: Ton Jochems/AirlinersGallery.com. Ryanair’s Boeing 737-8AS WL EI-EMO (msn 40283) in the Podkarpackie Travel special scheme taxies at Palma de Mallorca.
Ryanair: 