Flight wars as Ryanair plans 9 new routes

LOW- cost airline Ryanair has sparked a summer flight war with nine new routes from London’s Stansted airport, including daily trips to Nice and Naples and a three times- weekly service to Cagliari in Sardinia.

Customers will be able to fly direct from the Essex-based airport as part of the new deal, which also includes routes to Copenhagen in Denmark and French destinations Beziers, Clermont, Grenoble, Nimes and Strasbourg.

The budget carrier said the move was part of its push to sustain UK growth and would boost passenger numbers to more than 20m a year while supporting around 15,000 jobs.

It has also added more flights to 13 existing routes, including French destinations Bordeaux, Carcassonne and Marseille.

But the firm, which threatened to base all 50 of its planes outside the UK following the decision to leave the EU, refused to admit the expansion was a win for Brexit.

David O’Brien, chief commercial officer, said: ‘Brexit hasn’t happened and if we’re to wait around until some thinking emerges we wouldn’t do anything.

‘So we’ll do the prudent thing, which is to continue a modest growth of the UK and prudently allocate our capacity elsewhere and also be prudent about the capacity allocation in the UK.’

The group also revealed it was in the process of finalising deals with long-haul carriers Aer Lingus and Norwegian to create a transfer service which would allow passengers taking Ryanair flights to book their whole trip with a long-haul airline and have their baggage automatically transferred between planes.

It expects its business in the UK to grow around 7pc this summer, compared to last year’s growth of around 15pc to 16pc, as remote parts of Europe – such as Romania and Bulgaria – compete for the UK’s share of the market.

O’Brien said: ‘If you take Romania and Bulgaria combined, it has a combined population of around 30m. Their share in absolute terms is larger than the UK’s.’ Ryanair, which recently surpassed Lufthansa to become Europe’s biggest passenger airline by numbers, said it would make a formal submission to the Bundeskartellamt – the German competition authority – to protest against Lufthansa’s merger with Air Berlin, claiming federal and regional government bodies had participated in the rescue plan.

Meanwhile Stansted, which has been pushing for a second runway, said the additional nine routes marked ‘exciting times’ for its business and would enable it to outmanoeuvre rivals.

The firm said it was currently operating at around 24.5m passengers, with a capacity of around 43m and – unlike its competitors – had plenty of room to expand.

Both Heathrow – which has two runways – and Gatwick, which has one, operate near full capacity, meaning that disruptions, such as yesterday’s snow warning, quickly lead to delays and cancellations.