The airline Ryanair will grow again at Girona airport this winter with nine scheduled routes and a flight frequency of 42 weekly. There are four more destinations than a year ago. The low-cost airline also reactivates the base and between November and March two planes will spend the night at the Vilobí d'Onyar airport.
Between November 1 and March 30, 2024, the airline will fly to nine cities: London, Baden, Pisa and Krakow, where it already operated a year ago, and will be joined this winter season by Belfast, Birmingham, Brussels, Düsseldorf and Marrakesh. To Pisa, Baden and Düsseldorf it will do so with six weekly frequencies and to the rest of the destinations, with four.
The low-cost airline's forecast is to transport 1.3 million passengers in its fiscal year, which runs from April 1, 2023 to March 30, 2024. Ryanair's spokesperson in Spain, Portugal, France and Morocco, Elena Cabrera explained today that the growth in Girona this winter will be 70%, well above the Spanish average which is 15%.
Cabrera stated in a press conference this morning from Girona that the company's will is to "continue growing little by little in Girona." "We see a lot of potential to continue growing, both because of the infrastructure and because of the capacity that the region itself has," he said.
A growth that the company currently focuses on the international market. From Girona there will be no flights to any state destination, although they do not rule out in the future introducing some flights in the domestic market such as the one they operated this summer to Santiago de Compostela.
Asked about the impact that the AVE station could have on the Girona airport, Cabrera assured that "the better the infrastructure, the greater the flows there can be."
The increase in flights this summer, added to those in winter, will help Vilobí d'Onyar airport close the year with between 1.5 and 1.6 million passengers, which will be 17% more than in 2022. Between January and September, a total of 1.3 million travelers have already passed through airport facilities, the same number as the entire previous year.
"We must gradually increase activity," said the president of the Girona Provincial Council, Mique Noguer, who made it clear that the commitment that Ryanair has made for this winter has been without public aid.
The company took advantage of its visit to Girona to also announce the large figures planned for Barcelona's El Pra airport, where it has operated since 2010. For this winter it has scheduled 62 routes, four of which are new. They are the destinations of Cork (Ireland), Trieste (Italy), Gdansk (Poland) and Ouarzazate (Morocco).
There will be an increase in frequencies on more than fifteen routes and Ryanair's forecast is to transport a total of 8.5 million passengers from Barcelona in its fiscal year. At Reus airport, the company does not operate in winter.
