Ryanair to Open 3 New Bases on Canary Islands

Ryanair is to open three new bases on the Canary Islands in summer 2011.

The low cost airline will base six aircraft across Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Tenerife from February 2011 while also increasing Fuerteventura routes and frequencies.

Ryanair will operate 112 routes to/from the Canary Islands (including 35 new routes) which will deliver approximately 4.5m passengers p.a., sustaining over 4,500 local jobs including 350 Ryanair pilots, cabin crew and engineers.

In 2009, Ryanair carried just 300,000 passengers to the Canary Islands. However, since the Islands’ Govt and the Spanish Parliament incentivised air traffic growth by (a) reducing airport charges for 2010 and 2011, and (b) recently announcing a 2013-2015 Regional Marketing Fund to support continued air traffic growth, Ryanair will now grow its traffic to/from the Islands to 4.5m passengers p.a., which will restore all of the traffic lost by the Canary Islands between 2007-2009.

Ryanair’s Michael Cawley said, “Ryanair’s growth is directly attributable to the visionary initiatives of the Canary Islands Government who, in recent years, have identified low fare access as being critical, and have worked with Ryanair to reduce airport costs in order to return tourism to its previous 2007 record levels ... The announcement of a 2013-2015 Regional Marketing Fund, in parallel with AENA’s 2011 cost incentives, has allowed the Canary Islands deliver much lower airport costs and secure this largest ever investment by Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline, in Spanish Tourism.”

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