News: New Spanish flights from Liverpool
Flights > News > # 1179 (06/02/2007)
Ryanair is adding two new Spanish routes from Liverpool John Lennon Airport.
Flights to Palma and Alicante will run three times a week (Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays) from March 27 and April 19 respectively.
The airline said the additional destinations would bring the number of routes it serves from Liverpool up to 35, including nine to Spain - 18 more than rival budget carrier Easyjet.
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Neither Alicante nor Parma stand out as traditional ‘Ryanairports’, considering that both are already very busy holiday destinations, without the need to do any special deals with a hard bargaining operator like Ryanair. Alicante also has a no-frills alternative down the road at Murcia, with Valencia also having recently established itself as a popular budget destination. Meanwhile, Palma, with its year-round sunshine, is one of the busiest airports in the Mediterranean, without any prospect of an alternative low cost hub being established in Majorca to add competition. However, as we have already seen at Madrid Barajas, Ryanair will happily take up slots in busier airports, if the right deal is on the table.
Launching cheap flights to Alicante and Palma from both London Stansted and Liverpool might look like Ryanair is offering a challenge to Easyjet, but the initial frequencies of the Irish airline’s service on this route still lags some way behind the Big Orange.
This move also sees Ryanair going head-to-head with Air Berlin, which uses Palma as a hub for onward connecting flights. It is too early to say whether or not Ryanair would try to drive its competitors off this route, or whether this is simply a new strategy to make some easy cash on two very popular destinations.
This naturally leaves us wondering whether or not Ryanair will now start cheap flights to Malaga from some of its UK bases. Currently, Ryanair only operate flights from Dublin to Malaga despite the fact that nearly all the other major UK based budget airlines offer flights to the Costa Del Sol gateway, as well as a host of charter operators.
