Ryanair January traffic down 6%, airline to open Budapest base
Ryanair’s January traffic declined by 6%, the company said today as it also revealed plans to open a base in Budapest.
Some 4.39m passengers flew with the airline last month, compared to 4.66m in January 2011, as the airline took aircraft out of service because of high fuel prices.
Load factor for the month, or number of tickets sold as a percentage of seats available, was 71%, unchanged from the same period last year.
“As previously guided, Ryanair’s 2011/12 winter traffic was expected to decline by approx 5% as we sit up to 80 aircraft on the ground due to higher oil prices,” the company said in a statement.
Meanwhile at a press conference in Budapest today Ryanair said that it will base four aircraft in the Hungarian capital following the collapse of Malev.
The Hungarian state airline has gone bust with debts of over €200m, with all Malev planes grounded from this morning.
Ryanair said its new Hungarian base would from February 17 deliver up to 2m passengers per year to the country and would support 2,000 jobs at Budapest Airport.
“This largest ever investment in Hungarian aviation and tourism is subject to reaching final agreement with Budapest Airport today on costs, facilities and handling,” the airline said.
“Because Ryanair has grounded up to 80 aircraft this winter, it has the capacity to respond immediately to the Malev grounding by moving aircraft, pilots and crews to Budapest within two weeks, in order to minimise the disruption to Hungarian consumers/visitors and tourism as a result of the Malev closure.”
