Ryanair has doubled down on Malaga Airport despite its ongoing spat with Aena over rising charges.
The Irish low-cost giant, which recently cut a million seats from its Spanish winter schedule, has now announced it will grow its Costa del Sol operation, offering 83 routes from Malaga this winter.
These include nine new ones and 24 extra flights on existing connections. That represents a 7% increase on last year.
The new destinations include Pardubice (Czech Republic) and Bratislava (Slovakia), as well as the extension of several summer-only routes into the colder months: Brno and Ostrava (Czech Republic), Lübeck and Münster (Germany), Stockholm Västerås (Sweden), Teesside (England) and Warsaw (Poland).
Most of these new services will run twice weekly, with Warsaw operating six times a week and Bratislava four.
Ryanair is also bulking up on popular routes, adding frequencies to destinations such as Copenhagen, Dublin, Fez and Milan. The only casualty is the service to Santiago de Compostela, now covered by Vueling.
‘Málaga is a strong, competitive destination,’ said Ryanair’s Spanish spokesperson Alejandra Ruiz. ‘It makes sense to move capacity to markets where we can keep growing profitably.’
The announcement was made on Thursday at Málaga Airport, attended by a line-up of local authorities including the city’s mayor, Francisco de la Torre, provincial chief Francisco Salado, regional government delegate Patricia Navarro, and airport director Pedro Bendala.
Mayor De la Torre hailed the airport as Spain’s fourth-busiest and at times the third, stressing its role in cementing Malaga’s ‘European vocation’.
Salado, also head of Turismo Costa del Sol, praised Ryanair as a ‘great ally’ of the region, pointing out that the airline already accounts for 31.2% of arrivals so far this year.
Read more Andalucia news at the Spanish Eye.
