Ryanair is planning to begin seven new routes from the UK to airports in Europe and traffic is expected to increase from six million passengers to seven million passengers in the current year, the low-cost airline has stated.
News of the planned route expansion came with Ryanair's third quarter results which showed a 29 per cent increase in pre-tax profits to €19.9 million.
Ryanair chief financial officer Mr Howard Millar declined to reveal the new destinations but it is understood that Ryanair plans to increase its penetration of the Italian market where it currently serves six destinations.
Ryanair repeated its criticisms of the decision by the Government not to allow it to build its own terminal and also criticised Aer Rianta for increasing costs for airlines from the beginning of January.
"The Irish Government has got it wrong. The days of protecting these state-owned monopolies are gone," the chief executive Mr Michael O'Leary said, adding that Ryanair has now abandoned plans to operate new routes out of Ireland.
Mr O'Leary said that conditions for growth in the UK are now favourable following the move by British Airways to focus on the premium end of the market.
In the third quarter to the end of December, sales rose 35 per cent to €89.6 million, with earnings per share up 33 per cent to 9.5 cents. During this period, Ryanair expanded its network with a new route from London to Aarhus in Denmark and increased frequency of existing routes from London to Frankfurt, Stockholm and Glasgow. Despite fuel prices rising sharply over the past year, Ryanair has been able to hedge its fuel requirements for all of 2000.
"We are increasing our frequency and lowering our prices on the Stansted-Dublin and Stansted-Glasgow routes," said Mr O'Leary. He added that, while the current strength of sterling is artificially enhancing Ryanair's yields, sterling will weaken over time against the euro and will have a negative effect on yields.
"In the meantime, we remain happy with current trading and comfortable with the present range of analysts' forecasts for the full-year outcome."
Analysts are expecting full-year profits from Ryanair in the order of €80-85 million.
