Ryanair plans to reopen its base at Copenhagen airport in December 2023, following its brief spell in the Danish capital in 2015.
The low-cost carrier is investing $200 million in the new base, with two Boeing 737 aircraft and up to 100 direct jobs for pilots, cabin crew and engineers. The base will complement its existing Danish base at Billund.
Ryanair will offer 24 routes from Copenhagen for the winter season, including new services to Dusseldorf, Faro, Paris and Warsaw. The carrier will also increase frequencies to the cities of Gdansk and Krakow.
The airline expects the new base to increase its annual traffic from 2.3 million passengers to almost three million.
The airline says that the new base will allow it to offer “low fare competition and choice for early morning departures and late evening arrivals at Copenhagen”.
Ryanair is also calling on the Danish Regulator to lower Copenhagen’s high airport charges, which it argues “continue to hamper Copenhagen’ post-Covid recovery”. As it stands, Copenhagen’s capacity is at 85 per ent of its pre-Covid volumes.
The low-cost carrier says that the airport should “follow the lead of many other EU airports, who since Covid have lowered airport fees to recover traffic growth”.
Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary said:
“At a time when Copenhagen Airport lags behind the rest of Europe with its high fees and its failure to recover its pre-Covid traffic, Ryanair calls on the Danish Regulator to lower CPH airport fees to enable all airlines to pass on these lower fees in the form of lower air fares, and allow Copenhagen to recover its pre-Covid traffic and tourism.
“Danish citizens and visitors seeking the lowest air fares to Copenhagen have long used the Ryanair.com website. Today’s announcement means that from Dec these low fares will now extend to early morning departures and late evening arrivals and will provide much needed choice and low fare competition to Denmark’s State aided, high fare airlines SAS and NAS.”
To celebrate the new base, the airline has launched a Danish seat sale with 50,000 seats from 229DKK one-way. Seats must be booked by 24 August 2023 for travel between 1 November 2023 and 10 December 2023.
