Irish budget carrier, Ryanair is to establish a new base at Santiago de Compostela Airport in 2016, the second busiest airport in Northern Spain. The airline will station a single Boeing 737-800 at the facility from summer 2016, its 12th aircraft base in Spain and 74th across its network.
The airline says the $100 million investment will enable it to improve schedules on its domestic services from the airport and strengthen its position within the Spanish market. It will now formalise discussions with the airport business development team and stakeholders on its network strategy from Santiago de Compostela.
"Ryanair is pleased to announce a new Santiago base for summer 2016, our 12th base in Spain, with one based aircraft, and we look forward to discussing growth possibilities with the Concello de Santiago de Compostela,” said Kenny Jacobs, chief marketing officer, Ryanair.
The low-cost carrier is currently the largest operator from Santiago de Compostela and carried just short of one million passengers on a network of domestic and international routes in 2014. This is a 45.1 per cent share of the airport’s total traffic for the year, according to AENA official statistics.
Santiago de Compostela has become a focus city over recent years and has been part of the Ryanair network for just over ten years. It launched flights in April 2005 with a regular link from London Stansted but this summer has grown to offer domestic links to Alicante, Barcelona, Lanzarote, Las Palmas, Madrid, Malaga, Palma de Mallorca, Seville, Tenerife and Valencia and international services to Bergamo, Frankfurt Hahn and London Stansted. It has also offered schedules to East Midlands, Liverpool, Reus and Rome Ciampino over the last decade.
Our analysis of OAG Schedules Analyser data highlights the growth in Ryanair activities at Santiago de Compostela Airport since 2005 and how its domestic offering has overtaken its international activities in recent years.
The base announcement will reverse a capacity decline from the carrier at the airport since 2011 which saw year-on-year departure seats decline 6.1 per cent in 2012, 3.4 per cent in 2013 and 11.7 per cent in 2014. This year’s published schedules show a forecasted 1.6 per cent growth for the current year.
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