RYANAIR has confirmed it will launch a new flight connecting England and Ireland within its winter 2023 schedule.
The Irish airline announced a total of seven new routes within its London schedule for the upcoming season, as well as increased frequencies on 30 of its existing routes.
The new ruotes will carry passengers from London to Belfast, Basel, Poprad, Ouarzazate, Tirana, Treviso and Vigo.
To support the increase in its London traffic, the no-frills airline will also base two new B737 aircraft at Stansted Airport for the winter season, bringing its London-based fleet to 50.
The additions to the schedule will also create over 60 new jobs for pilots, cabin crew and engineers at Stansted.
“Ryanair is pleased to add seven new routes this winter from London to Belfast, Basel, Poprad, Ouarzazate, Tirana, Treviso amd Vigo, as well as increased frequencies on another 30 winter sun and city break routes,” Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary said.
“To support this growing winter schedule, we have based two new aircraft at Stansted, bringing our total London-based fleet to 50 aircraft - a $5bn investment - and creating over 60 new high pay jobs,” he added.
Ryanair Group CEO Michael O'Leary has called for NATS to be reformedWhile announcing their new routes, the Ryanair boss went on to call for the British government to “reform NATS” following the air traffic control fault which caused disruption to thousands of flights and passengers last month.
On August 28, which was a Bank Holiday in Britain, the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) organisation confirmed it was experiencing a “technical issue” and had applied UK-wide traffic flow restrictions to flights to “maintain safety”.
The restrictions caused delays and cancellations to thousands of flights due to fly in and out of the UK on one of the busiest travel days of the year.
It was three hours before the fault was fixed, by which point a huge backlog of flights had built up, with the impact stretching to airports across the globe, and leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded.
“While Ryanair continues to grow and provide unbeatable route choice and low fares to our 52million UK customers per year, NATS are busy writing 'whitewash' reports to cover up their inexplicable incompetence which led to the cancellation of over 2,000 flights (over 360,000 passengers) and long delays to more than 5,000 flights (900,000 passengers) on Mon 28/Tues 29 Aug last,” Mr O’Leary said.
“Ryanair calls on Transport Minister, Mark Harper, and the UK Government to urgently reform Air Traffic Control and guarantee UK passengers that they will not suffer any more disruptions as a result of repeated NATS failures, mismanagement & incompetence,” he added.
