Ryanair set to ditch more UK and Ireland bases

The low-cost carrier Ryanair has announced this week that they are to relocate some of their routes away from the bigger airports and instead fly from more regional airports in a bid to save more money for their customers. Michael O’Leary, the chief executive at Ryanair, said that they will also be looking at moving flights away from the UK because of the increasing costs of flying from Britain.

Only last week Mr O’Leary said they were moving their Alicante and Faro flights from Shannon to Kerry and Knock airports for the summer of 2010 schedule. The chief executive blamed the rising cost at Shannon for their departure and joked that we will be seeing tumbleweed rolling along the runway before long.

Experts have warned that this may be the case for a lot of the major airports across the UK and Ireland as they have higher running costs than the smaller regional ones. Knock and Kerry look set to make a great deal of business as they have the facilities to handle the larger Boeing 737 jets.

Last year Ryanair passengers accounted for 60 per cent of the total travellers at Shannon Airport. The following season they will just have the one plane that is stationed there and will run weekly flights to Gatwick, Stansted, Malaga and Paris.

Next year will be a funny one in the airline industry as most of the non budget airlines struggle to turn the fortunes back to winning ways. While the like of Easyjet and Ryanair look set to keep on profiting in the face of recession.