NEW ROUTES AT CHARLEROI BASE
Ryanair Holdings PLC
11 December 2007
RYANAIR ANNOUNCES 5 NEW ROUTES AND
A 5th AIRCRAFT AT ITS BRUSSELS CHARLEROI BASE
Ryanair, Europe's largest low fares airline today (Tuesday, 11th December 2007)
announced 5 new routes from Brussels Charleroi to Bergerac, Limoges, Perpignan,
Porto and Zaragoza and a 5th Boeing 737-800 aircraft will be based in the
Belgian capital from 5th March. Next summer (2008), Ryanair will operate 26
routes to / from Brussels Charleroi in 2008, carrying over 2.5m passengers who
will sustain over 2,500 Belgian jobs in Wallonia.
BSCA's partnership with Ryanair continues to be a huge success, transforming
Brussels Charleroi airport from an empty, loss making white elephant into a
profitable, thriving, wealth generator. Ryanair welcomes the opening of BSCA's
new terminal in January 2008 which will deliver more low fare routes and more
visitors for the Walloon region. The continuing benefits of Ryanair's growth at
BSCA for the airport and the Walloon region highlights the absurdity of the
Commission's flawed and untenable 2003 state aid ruling at Charleroi. Ryanair is
confident that this unlawful ruling will be overturned on appeal by the European
Court of First Instance. This appeal will be heard in Feb 2008.
The European Commission continues to adopt a biased and discriminatory approach
to State Aid cases by repeatedly ignoring Ryanair complaints about € billions of
state aid provided to inefficient flag carriers while investigating spurious
complaints by competitors, about free market deals at tiny regional airports
which are perfectly lawful under the Commission's market investor principal.
Ryanair looks forward the European Commission being forced by the ECI to address
the following flagrant breaches of state aid rules which it has ignored for the
past two years:
•State aid of €1bn to Air France in the form of reduced domestic airport
charges
•State aid of €100m to Lufthansa through its sole use of loss making T2 at
Munich
•State aid of over €500m to the loss making Olympic Airways in Greece
•State aid of over €20m to Alitalia's subsidiary, Volare, through airport
debt write-offs
•State aid of over €1.7bn to Alitalia through recapitalisation and debt
write-off
Announcing Ryanair's latest expansion in Brussels, CEO Michael O'Leary said:
'Ryanair's 5 new routes at Brussels Charleroi are great news for Belgian
tourism, Belgian business and Belgian consumers who will enjoy even more
of Europe's guaranteed lowest fares to 26 destinations next year. We are
delighted that BSCA continues to grow and prosper with Ryanair and
welcome the opening of their new terminal which will enable the
development of even more low fare routes for Belgian passengers /
visitors.
'The huge success of the BSCA's low cost agreement with Ryanair exposes
the stupidity of the EU's unlawful decision at Charleroi. We look
forward to the European Court of First Instance forcing the European
Commission to end their discrimination by addressing the real and
repeated breaches of state aid to flag carriers which they have ignored
for the past two years.
'To celebrate these 5 new routes from Brussels Charleroi, we are
releasing 100,000 seats for travel between January and March for just
€10 including taxes on www.ryanair.com. We advise passengers to book
immediately as this offer will end midnight Thursday'.
To accommodate these 5 new routes, Ryanair will stop flying from Brussels to
London Stansted from 5th March 2008.
ENDS. Tuesday, 11th December 2007
For further information:
Peter Sherrard Ryanair Pauline McAlester Murray Consultants
Tel. +353-1-8121228 Tel. +353-1-4980300
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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