February 17 (SeeNews) - Irish low-cost air carrier Ryanair aims to connect Bucharest with all top European business capitals and expects to carry 40% more passengers to and from Romania in fiscal year 2018, sales and marketing executive for Central and Eastern Europe Denis Barabas said.
With 13 new routes in the pipeline for 2017 summer season, Ryanair expects to carry some 2.6 million passengers to and from the four airports which it operates in Romania in fiscal year 2018 starting April 1, Denis Barabas told SeeNews in an e-mailed interview.
Last year was busy for Ryanair in Romania - the airline opened its first two bases in the country, in capital Bucharest and in Timisoara, following a $400 million investment in four aircraft, and started operating from Oradea and Craiova airports.
Starting in March, Ryanair will launch two new routes from Oradea to Spain's Barcelona and Italy's Milan and a new route from Bucharest to Palermo in Italy.
"Our aim is to connect Bucharest with the top business capitals of Europe as Romania has so much to offer. Ryanair is always receptive to plans for modernising or construction of new Romanian airports and we look further to grow our operations here," Barabas said.
Romania is a market with a huge potential, as it has an average of 0.66 passengers per inhabitant, below the EU average of 1.7 passengers per inhabitant.
Currently, the air carrier links Bucharest with seven European capitals: Athens, Berlin, Brussels, Dublin, London, Madrid and Rome. The remaining five routes from Bucharest are to Bologna, Milan, Palermo, Bristol and Timisoara. The routes to Italy, where there are big Romanian communities, are the most popular, Barabas said.
Romanian authorities have been wavering over ways to increase accessibility to the country's biggest airport, Henri Coanda in Otopeni, which is located 16.5 km north of Bucharest. The options are the construction of a 14.2 km road - a project estimated to cost 6 billion lei ($1.41 billion/1.32 billion euro), or a railway line from the North Railway Station, estimated to cost 89 million euro.
The air carrier, which operates in 33 European countries and North Africa from 200 airports aims to transport some 119 million passengers in fiscal year 2018, up by 2 million compared to the previous year.
However, its solid expansion plans in Europe might be hindered by a possible exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union. "The uncertainty over Brexit, and the final outcome of the UK’s departure negotiations with the European Union, will continue to overhang our business for fiscal year 2018," Barabas said.
At the beginning of February, British lawmakers voted against parliamentary veto power over the Brexit deal, giving total power of decision to prime minister Theresa May.
"We hope that the UK will remain a member of Europe’s Open Skies system, but until the final outcome of Brexit has been determined, we will continue to adapt to changing circumstances in the best interests of our customers, our people and our shareholders," Barabas said.
The EU-U.S. Open Skies agreement signed in 2007 allows any airline registered in the EU or the U.S. to fly to and from any location within the EU, as well as operate transatlantic flights.
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