Ryanair launches 17 new routes from Portugal
Ryanair will have 17 more routes from Portugal next summer. The airline announced on Monday the schedule for next summer and, among the news is that the carrier from Lisbon will now have connections to: Bari, Madeira, Oujda, Venice and Poitiers.
From Faro it will add a route to Luxembourg and from Porto it will have three more connections: Billund, Madeira and Verona.
And from Madeira to have routes to: Brussels, Dublin, Lisbon, London, Manchester, Marseille, Milan, Nuremberg, Paris and Porto.
“With fares starting at just 29.99 euros, Portuguese citizens and other visitors travel to destinations like Billund, Dublin and Venice, and enjoy a well-deserved break in 2022. Ryanair leads Portugal’s post-Covid recovery once again which accelerates growth and employment growth over the next 5 years. Having created 560 new routes and inaugurated 15 new bases this year, Ryanair has been growing in the country and, in the summer of 2022, will have 65 new B737-planes. 8200 ‘Gamechanger’ “, says Ryanair in a statement.
Ryanair considers that TAP should release more than two classes of slots – slots that allow planes to take off and land – at Lisbon airport, thus allowing for greater competition.
“We think TAP diverts at least 250 slots per week” at Lisbon airport, said Michael O “Leary, CEO of Ryanair, at a press conference in Lisbon. The official accused the Portuguese carrier of blocking these slots, only canceling flights two to three weeks in advance, preventing other companies from using them. And gave some numbers.
According to the presentation by Michael O “Leary, between November 15 and November 21, 2019, a TAP carried out 1255 flights, and in the same period this year a Portuguese company had 1017 vacancies, thus having a cut of 31% of the flights. Looking at the period November 22 and November 28, TAP in 2019 carried out 1248 flights. In the same period this year, TAP had 1019 slots, which represents a 30% cut. TAP to free unused slots in Lisbon”, he reiterated.
During the press conference, the CEO of Ryanair also defended that next year the low-cost must surpass the Portuguese carrier, occupying the place of the first airline in Portugal. Ryanair’s leader estimates that by 2022 it will carry 12.5 million passengers, while TAP will carry 11.5 million people.
After the press conference, questioned, the responsible for Ryanair also said that one of TAP’s challenges is that before the pandemic “TAP was a company that transported 17 million passengers a year”. And with the pandemic, it is a company that, in a “Country with 10 million inhabitants needs 3 billion euros in State Aid”, which, in O’Leary’s opinion, is a high consumption of financial resources for what it delivers. .
Even because “it will be considerably smaller because the fleet will decrease. What TAP does well is that it has good connections to Latin America, [em especial ao] Brazil. And that’s valuable. But short-distance connections are bad, they are very expensive, timetables are not selected, flights are canceled. I don’t think I can compete with easyJet and Ryanair.”