Ryanair have added nine new routes to its service across
Europe. Four of the routes will operate from London’s
Stansted Airport: to Linz in Austria, Bari in Italy, Erfurt
in Germany and Jerez in southern Spain. Two will link
Stockholm with Rome and Milan, two will fly from Frankfurt
to Reus, near Barcelona, and Tampere in Finland, and one
will link Brussels with the Spanish city of Valladolid.
This will take Ryanair’s total number of routes to 146 from
11 bases in Europe, the airline said in a statement. Only a
month ago, Ryanair was Europe’s biggest airline by market
value, now this title goes to German airline Lufthansa.

Ryanair has been ordered to repay £3million – about a
third of the £9million ‘discount’ it was given from 2001 to
encourage it to fly to Charleroi after complaints that
Brussels Charleroi Airport made life easier for Ryanair by
offering cheap fees and subsidies that were not on offer to
competitors. Belgium’s Walloon region gave Ryanair EUR3.8
million euros (USD$4.8 million) in 2002 for publicity and
to subsidise a few very low cost, highly publicised fares
for a few seats on selected flights. The ruling stemmed
from a complaint by Britair, a subsidiary of French
national carrier Air France, which said it was forced to
cancel its London-Strasbourg link as a result of unfair
financial aid to Ryanair. Ryanair had suspended the service
in September pending the outcome of the appeal.

Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s chief executive, threatened
to axe any loss-making routes. The airline said fares would
rise by up to £12 because of the ruling. With the average
Ryanair one-way ticket costing around £25, Mr O’Leary
threatened: “This could double loads of
fares.”’

And Ryanair’s latest initiative, just when you
thought the service could get no worse… Ryanair has
confirmed it is taking “no-frills” flying a
stage further by ordering a fleet of planes without
headrests, no seat pockets, reclining seats or window
blinds. This would allow potential savings of more than
£1.3m a year by removing all remaining
“non-essential” items. They are also said to be
looking at the possibility of asking passengers to carry on
their luggage, cutting baggage handling fees.