Edition 89
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Friday, November 02, 2012
RYANAIR OUT TO BRIDGE THE GAP Do it our way and we’ll deliver 600,000 passengers and 600 jobs, AENA told DONNA GEE reports RYANAIR has offered to return 600,000 of Alicante Airport’s missing passengers in a dramatic bid to end the impasse over air bridges. The Irish budget airline has written to AENA airport authority with proposals to add new flights and new routes from April 2013. Ryanair say they are “offering to reverse much of Alicante’s one million passenger decline in 2012’’. They also maintained that acceptance would create or sustain up to 600 new jobs at Alicante Airport at a time of high and rising youth unemployment in Spain. In return, they want a withdrawal of compulsory air bridge use, and permission to return to walk on/walk off procedures which, they claim, “operated safely and successfully at Alicante for more than five years prior to the opening of
the new terminal’’. Ryanair have given AENA until November 15 to respond to the offer. Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara
commented: “Ryanair has always maintained that we would return to growth at Alicante whenever our flights are permitted to resume
using our walk on/walk off boarding procedures. “Currently Alicante allows approximately 50 percent of
Ryanair’s flights to use these procedures. “Ryanair can help Alicante to recover much of the one million passenger loss Alicante Airport has suffered in 2012 as a result of this misguided compulsory airbridge use policy. “We hope that AENA Alicante will accept Ryanair’s offer and that Ryanair and Alicante can begin growing again and create more visitors, more tourism and more jobs for young people in Alicante.” Meanwhile, Ryanair this week announced nine new routes at Manchester, Liverpool and East Midlands airports, which they say will produce a million passengers and sustain up to 1,000 new jobs. The new Manchester service takes in Corfu, Krakow, Lanzarote, Paphos and Trapani, while Lublin and Zadar have been added to the Liverpool schedule. The East Midlands additions are Marseille and Menorca.
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