Ryanair wants to double Manchester traffic

RYANAIR, the Irish budget airline expects passenger numbers to rise 10% in 2015 to 2.7 million as it launched its summer schedule.

The airline which in recent months has been making strides to be more customer friendly and also to woo business passengers, has added two new destinations, Shannon in Ireland and Eindhoven in the Netherlands and upped the frequency of existing routes to Alicante, Lisbon and Madrid, taking the total number of routes to 37 and weekly return flights to 204.

Chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs told TheBusinessDesk that the airline’s would like to double its Manchester business in the next five years to well over five million.
 
“Manchester is an important market for leisure, city breaks and business and we want to grow more – there is no reason why it can’t be as big a base as Madrid, where we have more than five million passengers a year.

“We are pleased to be the first airline in the UK to launch its 2015 summer schedule – and I would not be surprised if we don’t add further routes too between now and next year.”

Mr Jacobs, who previously worked for Makro in Irlam before moving to Tesco and then moneysupermarket.com, said Ryanair was particularly excited about its new Business Plus product, which it expects to strike a chord with the North West business community.

“The growth of the North West, and Manchester over the last few years, has been a great success story.  We expect a major factor in our growth will be business traffic from Manchester  to places like Cologne and Madrid.

“In launching our new product for the corporate market we have listen to what customers want in terms of flexibility and being first off the aircraft, and are confident it’s going to be popular.”

He said the Dublin-based carrier was happy with the relationship with Manchester Airports Group: “As a low cost airline we have to have the best deals with airports so we can keep prices low. We are pleased MAG bought Stansted and we have a good relationship with them so we can both grow our businesses.”

This week Rynair unveiled plans nearly to double in size and carry 150 million passengers a year by 2024 after placing a $22bn order with Boeing for 200 new Boeing 737 Max 200 aircraft, which will be delivered from 2018.