Ryanair plans 14 new summer routes from Dublin

Ryanair has announced an additional 14 new routes to and from Dublin Airport this summer to destinations including Spain, Greece and France among others, forecasting a 10 per cent jump in traffic from 2022.

DAA, meanwhile, said it will hire an additional 800 security staff this year in a bid to avoid the delays and lengthy queues that plagued last year’s peak travel season at Dublin Airport.

The Irish carrier will operate a total of 130 connections and more than 2,000 weekly flights to and from the capital, the airline told reporters at a press conference in Dublin Airport on Tuesday morning

Ryanair said the expansion of its summer schedule would support more than 13,000 jobs locally, including 1,000 direct pilot, engineering and cabin crew roles.

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The airline said the expanded schedule was “underpinned” by an increase in the number of Boeing 737 “Gamechanger” aircraft based at Dublin from 11 up to 16. It said the craft are more “environmentally efficient”, burning 16 per cent less fuel than earlier models and generating up to 40 less noise on Dublin Airport’s north runway.

The carrier expects to carry more than 16 million passengers at Dublin Airport this year.

Ryanair chief executive Eddie Wilson said the Dublin summer schedule was the airline’s “biggest ever”.

“Dublin is, I would say, the most connected airport in Europe,” he said, adding that Ryanair was the “most recovered” airline from the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, he warned the airline still risks being “T-boned by external events” such as the war in Ukraine.

Also speaking at the conference, DAA chief executive Kenny Jacobs said the airport operator plans to hire an additional 800 security staff this year with some 650 already in place.

“It will be a busy summer but we want it to be a very efficient summer,” the former Ryanair chief marketing officer said, adding that his goal was that 90 per cent of passengers will only have to queue for roughly 20 minutes over the peak travel period.

Asked about the threat that drones pose to the airport’s operations over the summer, Mr Jacobs said that DAA welcomed the Government’s decision to allow the operator to procure and operate anti-drone systems.

He said: “This is illegal. It’s always been illegal and any drone should not fly within five kilometres of Dublin Airport or any airports and anyone who does that or sees that should call 999 because it’s an illegal act.”

Mr Wilson said that he was confident that DAA would take steps to solve the issue around drones and that it will avoid the issues that led to travel chaos last summer.

“I don’t think we should be painting a picture of uncertainty in terms of people’s ability to travel this summer,” he said. “They’re going to be able to handle that growth and they’ve been recruiting at the pinch points like security.”

Mr Wilson said also said that Ryanair was confident that deteriorating macroeconomic conditions globally will not impact forward bookings.

“Ryanair, not unlike any sort of budget operator in any sector of the economy tends to do better than everybody else in an environment where people are more price sensitive,” he said. “We saw that during the financial crisis back in 2008. You see that in other sectors of the economy, like discount supermarkets have grabbed market share.”

Mr Wilson added: “We’ve been grabbing market share as other [carriers] have exited the market in other European countries. We also have extra capacity. So you have this sort of perfect storm of other airlines getting smaller. Ryanair getting bigger, and the lowest cost operator, that means that you tend to grab market share.”