At a recent press conference, the CEO of Ryanair has announced that the company intends to open a new base in the capital city of Athens.
The new base will be an important part of Ryanair’s investment program in Greece, where the company will be investing the sum of $280 million. The Athens base is expected to start operation in April with 2 aircraft.
From Athens Ryanair will offer six new travel destiantions – London, Milan, Chania, Paphos, Thessaloniki and Rhodes. Ryanair has said that it will carry over 1.2 million travellers a year to Athens, and will be offering 154 flights each week. The company also stated it would carry 1.6 million passengers a year to Thessaloniki from where it will run 212 flights each week.
One of Ryanair’s aircraft will be based in Thessaloniki, and it is estimated that the new job positions will be created by the airlines new base at the Athens International Airport.
From their base in Athens, Ryanair will be providing 4 daily flights to Chania, 2 daliy flights to London, Paphos and Rhodes and 10 daily flights to Thessaloniki.
Ryanair’s Director of Commercial, David O’Brien said ….
Ryanair is delighted to announce Athens and Thessaloniki as our second and third bases in Greece in addition to Chania. These 6 new Athens routes with multiple daily frequencies to Chania, London, Milan, Paphos, Rhodes and Thessaloniki, are ideal for business passengers or families booking getaways from summer 2014. These customers can also enjoy Ryanair’s recent customer service enhancements.
Our 6 new Athens routes will allow Greek consumers and visitors to escape Aegean/Olympic’s high fares and instead enjoy Ryanair’s lowest fares and industry leading customer service and punctuality. Only Ryanair, with its 175 new aircraft order, can deliver the capacity, new markets and low costs demanded by Greek consumers and visitors, and looks forward to working with Athens Airport to unlock the vast potential currently suppressed by high access air costs.
Our 3 new Thessaloniki routes to Athens, Pisa and Warsaw begin in April and go on sale tomorrow as part of our summer 2014 schedule, with 16 European destinations, including Brussels, London and Milan, amongst others. Ryanair’s 1.6m passengers p.a. will sustain up to 1,600 “on site” jobs in Thessaloniki, in a welcome boost to the economy.
To celebrate our new Greek bases, we are releasing a 100,000 seat sale with fares starting from €16.99 for travel across Europe in February and March, which are available for booking until midnight Thursday 16 January. Since seats at these crazy low prices will be snapped up quickly, we urge passengers to book them immediately on www.ryanair.com.”
More information about this story: http://www.ryanair.com/en/news
