Budget carrier Ryanair has launched its biggest ever summer schedule for its three London airports: Gatwick, Luton and Stansted.
The no-frills airline will offer 200 routes, including seven new services, as Stansted will add links to Basel, Dubrovnik, Sarajevo, Poprad Tatry and Tirana, while Luton will introduce Treviso and Palma to its network.
Ryanair will base two new B737 aircraft in London, bringing the total to 56.
It said this represented an investment of $200 million, creating more than 150 new jobs for pilots, cabin crew and engineers.
The number of passengers from London is expected top 30 million this year, up from 27 million in 2023.
Announcing the new routes, Michael O’Leary, group chief executive, took the opportunity to reiterate his calls for Martin Rolfe, the chief executive of UK Nats, to leave his role, and to criticise online travel agencies that ‘screen-scrape’ Ryanair’s website.
His criticism of Nats follows high-profile delays caused by air traffic control last year.
“While Ryanair continues to invest and grow in London, the UK Nats ATC continues to be an inefficient shambles which threatens passengers’ travel plans and UK traffic growth,” he said.
“Repeated Nats failures in June, August and December 2023 caused thousands of cancellations [and] delays for millions of UK passengers.”
More: Anger after latest air traffic control outage triggers Gatwick flight delays