Cyprus Mail 1 April 2021 - by Andrew Rosenbaum
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| Ryanair is adding routes and flights from Cyprus airports. |
Ryanair is to resume flights to and from Cyprus from April.
This summer will be a ‘win-win’ for Ryanair working with Hermes Airports, Maria Kouroupi, senior manager Aviation Development, Marketing and Communication, announced at a webinar on Wednesday.
“This will be one of the industry’s major success stories,” agreed Ryanair’s Director of Digital & Marketing Dara Brady. “Ryanair is committed to getting Cyprus tourism back on track.”
Both the Deputy Minister of Tourism Savvas Perdios, and the Minister of Transport, Communications and Works Yiannis Karousos gave speeches welcoming the new developments and promising support.
Ryanair will be expanding its schedule of flights from Cyprus this summer, with 106 flights per week, and 34 routes including five new routes from Paphos, Brady said. There will be three aircraft based in Larnaca, and the airline will create 90 jobs on the island.
“Ryanair already has the best coverage, with more than 40 countries as destinations., and we plan to fly over 2,000 days, and carry more than 200 million passengers this year. We’re really hoping to welcome back the UK passengers to Cyprus,” Brady said.
From June, Ryanair will start flights twice a week to Treviso in Northern Italy. “We expect a lot from the Italians – they’ve been locked up a long time and are very eager to start travelling again,” Brady noted.
From July, Ryanair will add Bali, Bologna, Rhodes and Corfu to its program twice a week. The company connects Paphos airport with a total of 32 destinations, and there is the base for three aircraft of the company, which implies 90 direct jobs for the region.
From Larnaca, Ryanair will continue its flights to Brussels and Vienna starting in July with four weekly flights.
“To help boost travel, Ryanair has launched this month a new Covid-19 travel wallet which will make our lives easier when it comes to traveling because you can store in one place all the health certificates and other documents you need,” Brady added.
Customers can now upload their negative PCR tests, their Covid vaccination certificates and other Covid documents that may be required for EU travel this summer – it seems likely that the EU ‘Green Pass’ will not be ready in time. “The successful rollout of Covid vaccines will see the return of EU holiday travel in summer 2021 and the Ryanair Covid Certificate Wallet will make EU air travel as seamless as possible for customers this summer,” Brady said.
And the airline will continue to offer flight changes with no charge.
Ryanair worked with Hermes Airports ‘right through pandemic’
“It’s great to restart this summer, and to continue our long collaboration with Ryanair which continued right through the pandemic,” Kouroupi pointed out. “We’ll pick up from where we left off last year, and add some new elements. We think our joint success is a good example of what close collaboration among the government, the airport, and the carriers can achieve.”
“We just have to keep our fingers crossed that the pandemic will gradually fade away,” she added.
Brady noted that data and the example of Israel show that the vaccination rollout is succeeding, and that vaccines will have a significant impact on the removal of restrictions. “We think that consumer confidence will be high, and that there will be lots of pent-up demand. I know I’ve been stuck in Ireland for some long months and am very happy to see some sunshine.”
Ryanair will also open a new base in Zagreb this summer as part of expansion plans for Croatia, and the airline will soon reopen its base at Zadar for the summer.. The budget carrier will base two aircraft at Zagreb to operate 36 weekly flights from the Croatian capital, including a dozen new routes.
