Ryanair, Europe’s No.1 airline, today (19 Oct) announced its Winter 23/24 schedule for Bristol with 25 routes, including 2 new Porto and Venice routes, making for perfect winter sun and weekend city breaks. Ryanair will also operate even more frequencies on another 10 routes to popular winter sun destinations, such as Alicante, Budapest, Lanzarote, Malaga, and Sofia.

Ryanair will base 1 new aircraft at Bristol Airport for winter 23/24, bringing its total Bristol-based fleet to 5, representing a $500m investment and supporting over 1,700 local jobs, including 30 new high-paid pilot and cabin crew jobs.

Ryanair’s Bristol Winter 23/24 schedule will deliver:

• 1 additional based aircraft (5 total)
• $500m investment
• 25 routes, incl. 2 new Porto & Venice routes
• Supporting over 1,700 local jobs, incl. 150 highly paid aviation jobs
• Bristol traffic to grow to 2.1m passengers p.a.

Ryanair is the UK’s No.1 airline, operating over 440 routes and carrying over 52m passengers p.a. to/from the UK on its fleet of 107 UK-based aircraft ($10.7bn investment), providing British citizens/visitors with unbeatable route choice at the lowest fares while driving year-round connectivity and inbound tourism which supports over 37,000 UK jobs.

While Ryanair continues to invest and grow in Britain, UK NATS ATC remains the biggest risk to passengers’ travel plans. Ryanair pays NATS almost €100m p.a. for an ATC service that is repeatedly short-staffed and, on 28Aug, collapsed altogether, causing the cancellation of over 2,000 flights (over 360,000 passengers) and long delays to more than 5,000 flights (900,000 passengers) without plausible explanation. NATS followed this latest shambles with more flight disruptions at Gatwick due to staff shortages. Ryanair calls again on Transport Minister, Mark Harper, to immediately instruct NATS (where the UK Govt owns a majority) to reimburse all its airline customers for the costs they suffered due to NATS incompetence on 28 Aug last and urgently reform UK ATC to ensure that such avoidable system collapses do not recur.

To celebrate Ryanair’s Winter schedule at Bristol Airport and its 2 new winter routes to Porto and Venice, the airline has launched a limited-time seat sale with fares from just £21.99, which must be booked by 21 Oct 2023, available only at www.ryanair.com.

Ryanair’s Head of Communications, Jade Kirwan, said:

“Ryanair is pleased to announce more growth, investment and jobs for the South West with the launch of Ryanair’s Winter 23/24 schedule for Bristol. With 25 routes for Winter, including our new Porto and Venice routes, as well as increased frequencies on another 10 popular winter sun destinations, like Alicante, Budapest, Lanzarote, Malaga and Sofia, our customers in the South West can avail of a wide range of winter destinations at Ryanair’s infamously low fares.

To support this growth, Ryanair will base another new aircraft at Bristol Airport for Winter 23/24, bringing our total fleet at Bristol Airport to 5 aircraft – a $500m investment supporting over 1,700 local jobs, including the creation of 30 new high-paid aviation jobs.

While we continue to grow and provide unbeatable route choice and low fares to our 52m p.a. UK customers, NATS are busy writing “whitewash” reports to cover up their inexplicable incompetence, which led to the cancellation of over 2,000 flights (over 360,000 passengers) and long delays to more than 5,000 flights (900,000 passengers) on Mon 28/Tues 29 Aug last.

Ryanair calls on Transport Minister, Mark Harper, and the UK Govt to urgently reform ATC and guarantee UK passengers that they will not suffer any more disruptions as a result of repeated NATS failures, mismanagement & incompetence.”