Ryanair lashes lack of tourism ‘initiative’
The low-cost airline announced four routes to Poland and one to Lithuania that will begin during the winter schedule.
The routes will see a Ryanair 737 that is normally withdrawn from Cork Airport remain there for the whole year.
The new routes are to Gdansk, Krakow, Warsaw, Wroclaw, and Vilnius. The routes will put Ryanair in direct competition with Hungarian airline Wizz Air.
Rates on the new routes are being offered at a special introductory rate of as low as €6.99 for a flight to Gdansk.
Ryanair’s deputy chief executive Micheal Cawley said the new routes were 50% cheaper that their Hungarian rival and would deliver an extra 850,000 passengers.
“Our Cork winter 2012 schedule now grows to two Cork-based aircraft and 10 routes which will deliver 850,000 passengers a year at Cork Airport, sustaining over 800 on-site jobs,” he said.
Mr Cawley blasted the Government for failing to engage with Ryanair on a tourism proposal he said had successfully delivered thousands of extra tourists to the Canary Islands.
Ryanair is paying five times the airport charges in Ireland that they pay at airports across Europe.
Mr Cawley said Ryanair pays €15 a passenger in charges in Ireland while the average in Europe is €3. The Ryanair proposal would see the airline continue to pay €15 for existing passengers but any new passengers would be tax-free.
Mr Cawley said despite what the CSO says, tourism numbers in Ireland are down and a boost like the Ryanair proposal is what the tourism industry needs.
“The tourism statistics produced by the CSO are baseless and inaccurate,” said Mr Cawley. He said 95% of tourists fly into Ireland and airlines are not going to fly somewhere that is losing them money.
Mr Cawley described the state of Irish airport charges as “so uncompetitive it is tragic”.
He said not even Greece, which he described as being in a similar financial position to Ireland except with worse PR, had established an airport tax.
