Ryanair Alicante, Bristol, Edinburgh new routes launched

Irish low-cost airline Ryanair plans to add four new routes to Alicante in southern Spain, 12 new routes to Bristol, and seven routes to Edinburgh, at a cost of $350 million.

Ryanair will add a new Boeing 737-800 to its base at the Spanish airport, two in Bristol, and two in Edinburgh. The new Boeing 737-800 aircraft will help it add new flights to Ireland and Bristol.

Ryanair’s Alicante-Bristol flights will be launched on July 3, 2009.

Ryanair also plans to launch Edinburgh-Poitiers and Edinburgh-Rome flights.

Recently, Ryanair had announced that it would start flights from City of Derry and Knock airports to Alicante. The new flights will be launched on June 4, 2008, and will operate twice a week. Ryanair has said that the new routes would provide 480 local jobs and garner a revenue of £45 million.

Ryanair said that Alicante flights to Wroclaw will begin on June 5, 2009, and Alicante-Bristol flights will start on July 3, 2009. Ryanair expects that together Ryanair’s traffic at Alicante will increase to 2 million per annum. It will also safeguard 2,000 local jobs and provide over €200million in tourism revenues.

Ryanair expects it new routes to and from Alicante, Barcelona, Cagliari, Eindhoven, Limoges, Malta, Montpellier, Perpignan, Rimini, Seville, Toulon and Trieste to increase its traffic at Bristol to 1.6 million per annum, safeguard 1,600 local jobs, and provide 180 million in tourism revenues.

The seven new routes at Edinburgh to and from Carcassonne, Limoges, Leipzig (Altenburg), Malta, Poitiers, Rome and Zadar will bring Ryanair’s traffic at Edinburgh to 2 million per annum, sustain 2,000 local jobs, and garner nearly €200million in tourism revenues.

The new Derry-Alicante flight is on sale and, like other Derry international flights to Birmingham, Glasgow (Prestwick), Liverpool, Stansted, Luton, will be guaranteed low fares and no fuel surcharges.

On January 21, 2009, Ryanair had said that it would slap a €30 fine on passengers who try to carry more than one piece of cabin baggage on board. Ryanair allows passengers to carry upto 10kgs of baggage but feels that the allowance is being abused by passengers.

Passengers will now be charged extra for each extra piece of baggage.

Ryanair operates has 31 bases in Europe and North Africa and runs 729 routes.

Ryan has very high passenger numbers. It has the highest numbers in the world in terms of international passengers, and third highest passenger numbers in Europe.