Ryanair will fly to a record 25 destinations from Cork this summer, lured by discounts on the airport's charges offered to airlines to boost post-Covid travel.
The Irish carrier will base a third aircraft at Cork Airport, creating an extra 30 jobs, and add seven new destinations from there.
Ryanair plans to fly 120 times a week across 25 routes, to destinations including favoured holiday locations such as Faro, Lanzarote and Tenerife.
The seven new routes will be Alghero in Sardinia, Pisa, Valencia, Venice, Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh.
Welcoming the news, Cork Airport managing director Niall MacCarthy said that the business expected passenger numbers to top two million this year.
Cork's traffic recovery scheme, which rewards all airlines for restoring passengers, prompted Ryanair to boost summer plans for the airport, according to Eddie Wilson, chief executive of the group's biggest subsidiary.
DAA, the airport's owner, is spending about €10 million this year on the scheme to boost Cork's traffic following almost two years of Covid-19 travel curbs.
The Government earmarked €90 million this year for the Republic’s airports to spend on schemes to incentivise airlines to restore passenger numbers.
State-owned DAA’s schemes tie discounts in charges levied on airlines to the actual number of passengers that carriers fly into airports relative to pre-Covid levels.
Government support
Mr Wilson acknowledged the Government’s support for the schemes, but urged it to extend this until the end of March next year to ensure as many Ryanair planes as possible remain based in the Republic.
He said that this would allow Irish airports compete with those in Croatia, Italy, Portugal and other European countries that offer incentives of their own.
“This will ameliorate the damage caused by the pandemic, and the Government needs to urgently support this vital investment in infrastructure at Irish airports, particularly this winter, to ensure the continuity of airline seat capacity at all Irish airports,” he added.
Mr Wilson said basing a third aircraft at Cork amounted to a $100 million (€90 million) investment at the airport.
He predicted that the extra routes would aid the return of tourists to the southwest as well as enabling Irish people to fly to the sun.
Mr MacCarthy noted that research showed pent-up demand for travel. "It has been a long wait, but we know that the travelling public across the south of Ireland will support these routes strongly," he said.
