Ryanair is adding more than a million additional seats to its UK schedule this winter. A move it trumpeted as a relief to travelers in the wake of capacity cuts by other airlines, most importantly British Airways.
The additional seats, Ryanair said in a statement on August 23, are a “response to BA’s announcement that it will cancel eight percent of its winter schedule (over 10,000 flights) due to staff shortages and capacity cuts at ‘Hopeless Heathrow.’” Heathrow informed airlines on August 15 that it would extend capacity caps first introduced in June through October 29. Ryanair does not fly from Heathrow, instead primarily serving London’s Stansted airport with small operations at Gatwick and Luton.
Ryanair’s new flights also benefit areas of the UK outside of London, including airports in Birmingham, Edinburgh, and Manchester. In total, the Irish discounter serves 20 UK airports, more than any other airline including British Airways. Other major competitors in the UK shorthaul market include EasyJet, Jet2, and Wizz Air.
According to data from Diio by Cirium, Ryanair’s UK schedule for December is now about 4 percent larger than it was in the same month of 2019, based on total number of seats scheduled. The carrier is offering many new winter routes that did not exist before the pandemic. London Stansted to Vienna and Stockholm, for example.
Operational woes at London’s airports have gained much attention this summer, leading to long queues, and many flight cancellations and delays. In July, Heathrow airport introduced “temporary capacity limits to improve passenger journeys over the summer getaway.” These limit the facility to 100,000 departing passengers per day. That compares to a daily average of about 125,000 passengers in July 2019, airport data show. During the pandemic, that daily average dipped to around 14,000 passengers in July 2020, and 24,000 passengers in July 2021. According to Heathrow, the caps are having their intended effect, leading to “fewer last-minute cancellations, better punctuality, and shorter waits for bags.” It noted that several other European airports, including Amsterdam Schiphol, Frankfurt, and Gatwick have also put in place “equivalent capacity limits.”
Gatwick, however, said Monday that its capacity edict would sunset at the end of August as the airport “returns back to usual business operations.” The end of restrictions at Gatwick is likely benefit EasyJet, which as the airport’s largest carrier is scheduled to fly more than half of the seats at Gatwick in the second half of the year, Diio by Cirium data show.
European airport traffic typically spikes in July and August, the two busiest months of the year for leisure travel, before dropping in the fall. Most European airlines depend on summertime profits to offset wintertime losses. That pattern even holds true for Ryanair, one of the most profitable airlines in the world. In 2019, for example, it collectively lost roughly $150 million at the operating level during from October through March. But it earned $1.4 billion in profits between April and September. Airlines were thus frustrated that airports could not accommodate all the demand they had this summer, a crucial time for amassing as much profit as possible to cover off-peak losses.
Route Briefs
- EasyJet is putting its new Lisbon slots to good use with 12 new routes. The discounter will connect the Portuguese capital nonstop to Barcelona, Bilbao, Fuerteventura, Grand Canary, Marseille, Marrakech, Milan Bergamo, and Toulouse from late October; and Birmingham, Rennes, Tenerife South, and Valencia from November, per Diio by Cirium schedules. EasyJet will also resume flights between Lisbon and Zurich in October, which were suspended in September 2020. TAP Air Portugal was required to divest the 18 Lisbon slots to EasyJet as part of a European Commission condition to the state pandemic aid the airline received. With the slots, EasyJet will inch ahead of Ryanair as Lisbon’s second largest airline by December with just over a 12 percent share of seats.
- Competing European discounter Wizz Air is also expanding, but eastward. The airline will link Dammam, Jeddah, and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia to 11 cities in Europe. Wizz will connect Budapest and Larnaca to all three cities; Bucharest, Milan Malpensa, Rome Fiumicino, Venice, and Vienna to Jeddah and Riyadh; Catania, Naples, and Sofia to Riyadh; and Tirana to Dammam. The routes launch between December and April 2023, with the expansion following a memorandum of understanding that Wizz signed with the Saudi government in May.
- Frontier Airlines continues its growth this winter with 10 new domestic routes from Phoenix Sky Harbor. The discounter will connect Phoenix nonstop to Baltimore-Washington, Fort Lauderdale, Orange County, Philadelphia, and Portland, Ore., from November; and Indianapolis, Kansas City, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Nashville, and Seattle-Tacoma from January 2023. Frontier will compete with American Airlines and Southwest Airlines — plus other carriers — on eight of the 10 routes, with American its sole competitor to Philadelphia and Southwest to Baltimore, per Diio. With Frontier’s capacity already above 2019 levels, the airline’s CEO Barry Biffle has said it plans to grow by double-digits annually through the end of the decade.
- JetBlue Airways has challenged American‘s application for two daily Havana frequencies available to U.S. carriers. As challenges go, it’s small: JetBlue wants just one weekly frequency on Saturdays — leaving American 13 weekly frequencies — to offer two Fort Lauderdale-Havana flights on that day, according to the airline’s Department of Transportation application last week. JetBlue has three flights between Fort Lauderdale-Havana flights the rest of the week, while American operates six daily Miami-Havana flights. The two daily Havana frequencies have been available since 2020 but not awarded due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Route tidbits: Delta Air Lines will launch new seasonal service between Boston and San Juan this winter. The carrier will offer a daily flight with a Boeing 737-900ER from December 17 through April 23, per Diio by Cirium. On the West Coast, Alaska Airlines will connect Paine Field north of Seattle to Anchorage daily with an Embraer E175 from November 30. Discount startup Play Airlines is doubling its Washington, D.C.-area presence with flights to Washington Dulles from Reykjavik beginning April 26; the route complements its existing service to Baltimore-Washington. Another startup, Avelo Airlines, will add three routes from Fort Myers this winter: twice-weekly to Kalamazoo and Lansing, Mich., begins November 11, and thrice-weekly to Raleigh-Durham a day later. And in Asia, Thai AirAsia will begin thrice-weekly service to its first Japanese destination, Fukuoka, from Bangkok’s Don Mueang airport on October 12.