Ryanair launches 9 new routes/ditches some more and other FR news

[lowfaresbuster]

from RYANAIR.com

Ryanair launches 9 new routes (4 new routes from London and 5 new routes from Brussels, Stockholm & Frankfurt)

Ryanair, Europe’s No.1 low fares airline, today (3rd December 2003) launched 4 new daily routes from London Stansted to AUSTRIA, ITALY, GERMANY and SPAIN, with fares staring from an incredible £19.99. Ryanair now has 71 destinations served from London Stansted airport, and the new routes to Erfurt (Germany), Linz (Austria), Bari (Italy) and Jerez (Spain) will add an extra 400,000 in passenger traffic through Stansted airport, and will create an additional 400 jobs in the regional economies.

In addition, Ryanair has launched 2 new routes from Stockholm Skavsta to ITALY, 2 new routes from Frankfurt Hahn to SPAIN & FINLAND, and a new route linking Brussels to SPAIN.

NEW ROUTES FROM LONDON STANSTED TO:

LINZ – BARI – ERFURT – JEREZ

NEW ROUTES FROM STOCKHOLM TO:

ROME & MILAN

NEW ROUTES FROM FRANKFURT HAHN TO:

REUS & TAMPERE

NEW ROUTE FROM BRUSSELS CHARLEROI TO:

VALLODOLID

Over the last 12 months, Ryanair has launched over 60 new routes, and after on-going reviews, several routes will cease from 14th January 2004.



Ryanair is to scrap nine routes out of London, Stockholm and Frankfurt in the New Year and replace them with nine other routes.


In a statement issued this morning, the company said four news routes from London, two from Brussels and Sotckholm and one from Frankfurt would start operating early in the New year.


Amongst the cuts would be routes between the Finnish city of Tampere and Sweden's Skavsta airport due to weak demand and their replacement with a route from Frankfort to Tampere.


Mr O'Leary also reiterated his call on the European Commission to rule in favour of Ryanair's deal at Brussels Charleroi.


He said he remained hopeful that the Commission would recognise the benefits of the Charleroi service for Belgian consumers and visitors.


'Low fares are serving the needs of consumers and helping to develop under utilised secondary and regional airports. "We call on the Commission to rule in favour of Brussels Charleroi", he said.


editeds to remove the blatant advertising.....if thats possible with a Ryanair Press Release

[Wycombe]

....didn't think STN-OST would last very long. Some of the other STN ones are former Buzz routes, IIRC.

[Groundloop]

Ryanair already operate Stansted - Jerez! It was one of the Buzz routes they took over.

[james170969]

I flew to Ostend in June. Both outward and return flights were almost full (737-200). However in October it was a 146 ex Buzz and both flights only had around 30 passengers. I'm in Ostend at least three times per year so flying into Ostend rather than Charleroi is much more convenient. Hopefully some other airline will fly from the UK to Ostend

[newswatcher]

new bases (http://www.ryanair.com/press/2003/dec/rte-en-041203.html)

[Chillwinston]

Ryanair is to close all its recently-opened intra-Nordic routes due to weak demand and switch capacity to destinations outside the region, the European low-cost airline said on Wednesday.

The carrier said in a statement it would end flights from Sweden's Skavsta to Oslo in Norway, Tampere in Finland and Arhus in Denmark from January 14.

Ryanair Chief Executive Micheal O'Leary had flagged the move in his company's third-quarter results saying the flights were underperforming.

"All the routes we have decided to close had load factors under the Ryanair average of 80 percent," Ryanair's Nordic Sales and Marketing Manager Lotta Lindquist-Brosjo said. The load factor is a measure of airline capacity usage.

In place of the abandoned routes Ryanair will use Skavsta -- a small airport like others typically used by the company as a way to cut costs -- for flights to Rome and Milan. A Frankfurt service to Tampere and Reus in Spain will also be started.

The intra-Nordic routes were only announced in January but Lindquist-Brosjo said the Nordic region still had potential, with only 17 percent of the market in the hands of low-cost operators. "[The market] is immature... and Nordic people have a lot of vacation and high average income," she said.

Ryanair added in a statement it was also shutting its flights from London to Ostend in Belgium, Maastricht in the Netherlands and to the French destinations of Reims and Clermont.

New routes will be from London Stansted to Linz in Austria, Bari in Italy, Erfurt in Germany, Jerez in Spain, and from France's Charleroi to Calladolid in Spain.

(Reuters)

The pullout of Irish-based no-frills airline Ryanair from intra-Nordic flights will not ease competitive pressure on the region's dominant carrier SAS, analysts said on Wednesday.

Smaller carriers are already moving in to fill the gap, they said, and fares have been forced lower by Ryanair's presence, with SAS recently cutting business fares by up to 20 percent within Scandinavia.

"There will be lots of small companies in the market," said analyst Steven Brooker at Alfred Berg.

He added, however, that SAS was unlikely to see much further erosion in its ticket sales and average fares.

With Ryanair out of the way and no interest in the region so far from easyJet -- a bigger threat because it flies to the main airports that are popular with business travelers -- the greatest worry for SAS is now Nordic Airlink.

Finnair bought an 85 percent stake in the small Swedish carrier in November, aiming to turn it into the region's top budget carrier.

The head of Nordic Airlink said in an interview on Wednesday the airline would undercut competitors' fares by 30-40 percent and aimed to get 30-40 percent of the point-to-point traffic on its routes.

The carrier has announced cut-rate fares on flights between the Scandinavian capitals.

FARES PARED

Swedish newcomer FlyMe said Wednesday it would start flying from Stockholm to Malmo and Gothenburg six times daily in the first quarter of 2004, aiming for positive cash flow within eight months.

Analysts said Ryanair's exit showed that the only way to succeed in a region of just 24 million people was to focus on frequent flights linking main airports, not the smaller centers that Ryanair has successfully targeted elsewhere in Europe.

Ryanair had only three routes in the Nordic region, but that was enough to hit the profitability of SAS as passengers demanded cheaper tickets from Scandinavia's former virtual monopoly.

SAS, with a heavy focus on high-margin business travel, has also suffered more than its rivals from a meltdown in demand during the global economic gloom of the past two years.

Its yield, or average fare per passenger flown, fell 14 percent year on year in the third quarter at SAS's key Scandinavian Airlines unit.

Ryanair said on Wednesday it would close its routes from Skavsta, around 100 km (62 miles) from Stockholm, to three other regional airports: Tampere in Finland, Aarhus in Denmark and Torp, some 120 km from Oslo.

The airline said more than 20 percent of seats on the flights were empty and there were too few flights per day.

"The Ryanair model doesn't work that well in the Nordic region, which is less populated in the outskirts of big cities... They will never reach high frequencies because there's not enough demand," said an airline analyst at a Nordic bank.

(Reuters)