Ryanair has put Brexit fears aside in the short term by unveiling six new routes from London-area airports for next summer.
A record of 168 routes will be available, including five new services from Stansted to Aalborg, Dusseldorf (Weeze), Frankfurt, Oradea in Romania and Pardubice in the Czech Repubic, and a new Luton route to Bydgoszcz in Poland.
Europe’s largest budgte carrier expects to carry 24.8 million passengers a year through Stansted, Luton and Gatwick.
Chief executive Michael O’Leary said: “We remain concerned at the uncertainty which surrounds the terms of the UK’s departure from the EU in March ’19.
“While we continue to campaign for the UK to remain in the EU open skies agreement, we caution that should the UK leave, there may not be sufficient time, or goodwill on both sides, to negotiate a timely replacement bilateral which could result in a disruption of flights between the UK and Europe for a period of time from April ’19 onwards, and/or the cancellation of flights and routes, and the movement of our based aircraft to continental Europe.”
He added: ”UK customers and visitors are booking our summer and winter 2017 seats in record numbers as fares continue to fall.”
The summer 2018 scheule includes 144 routes from Stansted, 19 from Luton and five from Gatwick.
A flash sale of seats for £14.99 for travel in September will run until mindight on Monday.