Ryanair adds over one million seats to its UK winter schedule
Budget airline Ryanair has added over one million low-fare seats to its winter schedules to and from 20 UK airports including Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow and more.
In response to flight cancellations at UK airports recently, Ryanair has decided to boost its winter capacity by more than one million seats, with fares starting at £29.99/$35.
The budget airline, which flies from Stansted and Gatwick in the London region rather than Heathrow airport, expects to see its traffic grow in the current financial year from its original target of 165 million passengers to more than 166.5 million.
Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, the carrier flew 97 million passengers in the last financial year and a record 149 million before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, according to Reuters.
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary took a swipe at Heathrow when he announced the news on Tuesday. “Ryanair is now adding more capacity (over 1 million low-fare seats) to our largest ever UK winter schedule so that UK families can book with confidence that they will get to their low-fare city break and winter sun getaways without the risk of flight cancellations and avoiding “Hopeless Heathrow” as well.”
The news comes as British Airways announced it would cut thousands of flights from its winter schedule to meet the extended cap set by Heathrow.