New Ryanair fall and winter routes from Barcelona to Frankfurt, Newcastle and Bordeaux

Ryanair has announced new routes from Barcelona to the cities of Frankfurt-Hahn (Germany), Newcastle (UK), and Bordeaux (France) in their fall and winter season, which is between September and March.

In a presentation on Wednesday, the low-cost Irish carrier explained they would connect the Catalan capital to 62 destinations, with other already existing destinations including  London, Bristol, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Manchester, as well as Edinburgh, Dublin, Lisbon, Paris-Beauvais, Brussels, Cologne, Milan, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Krakow, and the three Baltic capitals: Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius.

Destinations in Spain including five in the Canary Islands, Seville and Santiago de Compostela also feature in their fall and winter offer, as well as Marrakesh, Rabat and Nador.

Elena Cabrera, the company's country manager for Spain, explained that this summer, Ryanair has sold 15% more tickets than in the same period just before the pandemic.

Indeed, Ryanair's CEO, Eddie Wilson, said that carrier "continues to grow across Spain and strongly again in Barcelona," while "the rest of the industry is contracting."  

Only in Barcelona, Ryanair believes this fall and winter the number of passengers will reach 3.3 to 3.5 million, a 7% growth on 2019 figures. 

Overall, the company expects to transport around 50 million passengers in Spain and around 166.5 million worldwide, before the financial year finishes in April. In 2019, the overall figure was 149 million passengers. By 2026, the business expects to reach 225 million travelers.

One of the things the company's CEO praised is the importance of air traffic, as a greater number of passengers comes with a "GDP growth, but if Barcelona as a city is going to grow, it cannot only rely on tourism but also business and education," he said before adding that "if the city grows and the airport doesn't, the access cost will get higher and will become less attractive to investments."

Cabin crew strike until January 2023

This September to March season will coincide with the cabin crew strike called by unions USO and SITCPLA, which will come to an end on January 7, 2023 if no deal between the parties involved is reached.

Talking about the protests that also took place in July and August and led to the cancelation of numerous flights, Wilson said there was no need for such stoppages.

"The strikes were unnecessary this summer, you always have to come to an agreement. It was unnecessary, and did not improve anything for the cabin crew," he added.

In fact, Ryanair claims its biggest problems come from air traffic controllers. in Europe. 

But unions are still striking as "it was impossible to get an agreement, and our crew sick and tired and left," Eddie Wilson said to media outlets in Barcelona.

USO and SITCPLA are still protesting working conditions because "they never wanted to reach an agreement," the CEO added before announcing that the vast "majority of people are in the CCOO union because they are getting benefits."

"All I want is stability because people have to get to an agreement," he added. 

One of the deals reached between Ryanair and CCOO was for this union's workers to get a higher salary increase, as well as having five days of work and three days of rest as standard practice, instead of five days and two they used to have before.

"We negotiate every day and we have no difficulty negotiating with unions in Europe and in Spain, but USO and SITCPLA overplayed their hand," Eddie Wilson shared.