Ryanair today (Thurs, 13 Mar) announced its Summer 2025 schedule for East Midlands with 33 routes and extra frequencies on 12 popular summer holiday routes, such as Alicante, Faro, and Malaga, providing Ryanair’s UK customers with more choice and regular connections at the lowest fares in Europe. This exciting new Summer 2025 schedule is underpinned by Ryanair’s 6 East Midlands-based aircraft, which represent a local investment of $600M.

While Ryanair continues to grow UK traffic and tourism, regional connectivity and tourism is suffering under the new Labour Govt, which while “claiming” to champion growth, have bizarrely increased APD taxes on short-haul flights by £2 per passenger from 2026, damaging growth and making the UK uncompetitive. This APD tax hike further penalises ordinary UK families travelling abroad on holidays and deters millions of potential visitors to the UK, who will travel instead to countries like Sweden, Hungary, and Italy, who are abolishing aviation taxes or are reducing airport fees to stimulate growth. The anti-growth increase in UK APD is damaging tourism and economic growth in the UK regions, and Ryanair continues to call on Rachel Reeves to immediately abolish this APD tax – a move that would deliver immediate and much needed growth across the regions.

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

“Ryanair is pleased to announce our Summer 2025 schedule for East Midlands, with 33 exciting routes to choose from, including must-visit city break destinations, like Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Dublin, Milan, and Rome, as well as top holiday hotspots, like Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Malta, Menorca, Rhodes and Tenerife, and all at the lowest fares in Europe. If that wasn’t enough, we’ve also added extra frequencies on several of our most popular routes for Summer 2025, like Alicante, Faro, and Malaga.

While this is great news for UK passengers looking to get away to soak up some sun this Summer, Ryanair could be growing more rapidly to/from the UK, but Rachel Reeves’ bizarre decision to raise APD taxes by £2 per passenger damages these growth prospects, and in particular regional UK airports. If the UK Govt. wants to deliver growth, they should abolish their penal and damaging APD tax, which makes the UK uncompetitive when EU countries like Hungary, Ireland, Sweden and regions in Italy are abolishing aviation taxes, and winning dramatic traffic, tourism, and jobs growth from the UK as a result.”