Ryanair to add 6 Routes, Aims to be Hungary’s #1 Airline in 2024
Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary.
Photo by Kester Eddy.
Ryanair will add six new routes and base two more aircraft at Budapest’s Ferenc Liszt Airport this summer, Michael O’Leary, the low-cost airline’s CEO, announced in Budapest on Tuesday, Feb. 20.
The new routes, serving Frankfurt-am-Main, Faro, Milan, Skiathos, Trieste and Tirana, mean the Irish carrier will connect a total of 66 destinations to Hungary and expand the total passengers carried to a record five million this year, a 22% increase on 2023 numbers, he said.
That would also make Ryanair the largest airline in Hungary. The additional two aircraft will bring the total number of planes based in Budapest to 10, making what O’Leary termed “a USD 1 billion investment” in the country.
The move will “support” 4,000 jobs in Hungary (directly and indirectly), including 300 “highly paid” Ryanair pilots and cabin crew, he said.
Not for the first time, the former Irish accountant had harsh words for the Hungarian Government, terming the current environment tax variously “bogus” and a “scam” that “penalizes ordinary citizens and visitors.”
Empty or Full
Moreover, he alleged that the tax is linked to aircraft regardless of whether they fly full or empty.
“We’re calling for a fair environmental tax, which should take load factors into account, i.e., if you travel with higher load factors, and you are more efficient, you should pay a lower environmental tax, [but] that’s not the way it operates [here]in Hungary.”
In response to a question from the Budapest Business Journal, O’Leary admitted he had flown from Vienna to Budapest as the sole passenger on a private flight earlier that day.
He further admitted that this flight’s miserably poor load factor would not be included in Ryanair’s official statistics as the aircraft concerned was owned by a subsidiary airline.
Asked if this did not make the statistics “bull s**t,” his reply was typical O'Leary: “All statistics are bulls**t, don’t you know that?”
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of February 23, 2024.
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