Ryanair to fly from Barcelona's main airport

Barcelona (CNA).- The low-cost airline Ryanair will operate from Barcelona-El Prat Airport from next September. According to the vice president of the Irish company, Michael Cawley, the airline will offer 20 new routes. Ten of the flights will be international routes and the other ten will be scheduled within Spain. The arrival of Ryanair to Barcelona-El Prat will generate 250 direct jobs and 2,000 indirect jobs. Ryanair already flies from two Catalan airports: Reus and Girona.

Ryanair expects to reach two million passengers within its first year in the Catalan capital. Cawley stated that they will be the first truly low-cost airline based in Barcelona, which will help to slow down the increasing descent of passengers (around 3 million in 2009) due to the economic crisis. According to the company, the 250 million dollar investment will be carried out without any help from the Catalan Government, as happened in the cases of the Girona and Reus airports.

From September, Ryanair will have 5 airplanes in Barcelona-El Prat, averaging 270 flights per week. The new international destinations are Brussels, Cagliari, Dublin, Düsseldorf, Edinburgh, Milan, Oslo, Paris, Rome and Venice. In Spain, the company will fly to Gran Canaria, Ibiza, Lanzarote, Málaga, Palma, Santander, Santiago, Seville, Tenerife and València.

The vice president of Ryanair said that when they started working out of Girona, no one, not even themselves, thought they would reach the figure of 50 million passengers and is convinced that now is the time to enter the Barcelona airlines market.