Ryanair excludes Cork from its ski schedule

LESS than a week after Ryanair pulled out of two routes from Cork Airport, the airline has dealt the airport another blow by announcing it would be launching no ski routes from there this winter.

The airline yesterday announced what it said was its biggest ever winter ski programme with the launch of its 2008/09 schedule, containing 101 routes. The airline’s new ski schedule amounts to a 40% increase in the number of routes it operated in its 2007/08 programme, Ryanair claims.

The airline extended this year’s ski schedule to April 19 to include the Easter holidays.

However, while Ryanair will operate 10 ski routes from Ireland this winter, with new routes from Dublin and Shannon and the launch of Kerry’s first ever ski route to Grenoble, none are being flown from Cork.

Last week Ryanair announced it was stopping its East Midlands and Glasgow flights to and from Cork because the airport was no longer prepared to give it a 100% discount on airport fees on the routes, only an 80% reduction.

The airline said at the time that it would move to stop any routes from Irish airports that were subjected to airport charge increases.

It warned that it had plenty of other low-cost locations where it could base its aircraft instead.

Yesterday the airline gave no reason for its decision not to launch ski routes from Cork.

It said the 10 ski routes it was offering are now available and are priced from €12.99 including taxes and charges.

There are eight routes direct from Dublin — Turin, Friedrichshafen, Grenoble Treviso, Milan, Basle — Mulhouse, Salzburg and Cuneo.

From Shannon, skiers can travel to Turin and from Kerry they can travel to Grenoble.