European low-cost carrier Ryanair is to open a new aircraft base at Paris’ Beauvais Airport in December. The new base has the potential to create thousands of jobs, both directly and indirectly.
This summer has been an interesting one in terms of low-cost airlines announcing new routes, especially since many LCCs suspended all operations at the start of summer. Ryanair rival Wizz Air has been launching new aircraft bases left, right, and center. Now it’s Ryanair’s turn to join the party with a new base. Before the current situation, the LCC had been threatening to close bases due to 737 MAX delivery delays.
A new Paris base
Ryanair this week announced that it would be launching a new Paris base. However, in typical Ryanair fashion, the airline won’t be using the main Charles De Gaulle Airport or even Paris’ Orly Airport to the south of the city. Instead, the airline is opting for Beauvais Airport. This will become the airline’s fourth aircraft base in France.
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Beauvais is about 70km from Paris as the crow flies, or 90km by road. According to the airport authority, it takes one hour and 15 minutes to get to Paris Porte Maillot on an airport shuttle bus. It takes a further 10-15 minutes to get to the center of Paris on public transport from Porte Maillot station.
Two aircraft on the base
Ryanair said that it would base two aircraft at Paris Beauvais. According to the airline, this equates to a $200m investment. The new French base is set to open on December 3rd. There will be over 105 weekly flights to 32 different destinations. The Irish low-cost carrier already serves many of these routes. However, there will be two new routes launched. These will see the airline serving Pathos and Manchester with twice-weekly flights.
Commenting on the new base, Ryanair’s Director of Commercial, Jason McGuinness, said,
“We are delighted to announce a $200 million investment at Ryanair’s fourth French base in Paris Beauvais Airport. This development will create over 2,300 direct and indirect jobs at a time when other airlines, including Air France retrench and reduce capacity and investment, despite receiving €7bn in discriminatory State Aid.”
The arrival of a new Ryanair base is welcome when airlines are generally operating vastly reduced timetables. Ryanair was forced to almost wholly suspend operations due to the COVID-19 crisis during April and May. Only a skeleton service of 20 routes remained in operation. While the airline resumed a handful more flights in June, it began a large return to the skies from July 1st with new health protection measures in place.
This month, Simple Flying reported that the airline’s passenger traffic had already recovered to 50% of its 2019 figure. However, some airlines such as Aeroflot have already seen domestic travel fully recover, while Kazakhstan’s Air Astana is even seeing more domestic demand than this time last year.
What do you make of Ryanair’s new Paris Beauvais base? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
