Ryanair | News, deals and offers from Ryanair

Ryanair today released 10,000 free ski seats to some of Europe’s most exciting ski destinations from the UK and Ireland. Ski lovers in Bournemouth, Liverpool and Glasgow (Prestwick) can take advantage of free weekend seats to Turin while Birmingham and London (Stansted) snow lovers can snap up free weekend ski seats to Cuneo.

Ryanair has announced that it carried almost 58 million passengers in the calendar year 2008, an increase of over 8 million passengers (18%) on its 2007 traffic. Ryanair capped off an extraordinary year of growth by carrying 4.4 million passengers in December, an 11% increase over December 2007.

Ryanair today launched the first attack in its New Year’s price war in a move that could help transform the fortune of UK retailers as it instructed European passengers to storm the UK in order to take full advantage of the UK Sterling exchange rate as Ryanair cut its guaranteed lowest fares to just £5 on 300 routes throughout Europe.

Ryanair today (Wednesday, 17th December 2008) welcomed the decision of the European Court of First Instance (CFI), which overturned the European Commission’s 2004 decision on Ryanair’s base agreement with Charleroi airport.

Ryanair confirmed that it continues to defy industry predictions that the airline industry will see traffic plummet in 2009 as it confirmed a large increase in sales of its Christmas Gift Vouchers, with sales for Christmas 2008 over 10% ahead of the same period in 2007.

Ryanair yesterday announced that it was slashing its fares on ski routes from Birmingham as it launched 10,000 £1 seats, including taxes and charges, on ski routes to Cuneo (Alps), Perpignan, Stockholm (Skavsta) and Oslo (Torp) for travel in January, February and March.

Ryanair has confirmed that it will close all of its routes to/from Fuerteventura from 31st January, claiming that local tourism group AIE failed to honour the commercial agreement it entered into with Ryanair to promote Fuerteventura as a tourist destination.

Ryanair yesterday launched its “Crazy Christmas Countdown” seat sale, which kicks off today with fares starting from just £1 and increasing by £1 each day until Sunday 21 December when fares peak at £12.

Ryanair has criticised security failures at Stansted Airport yesterday, claiming that the failings join a long list of management failures at the airport including lengthy queues at security and at passport control.

Ryanair today (Tuesday, 9th December 2008) began the countdown to Christmas by launching its 12 Days of Christmas - 1 Million Seat Sale, which kicks off tomorrow for just £1 and increases by £1 each day until Sunday 21st December when fares peak at £12 one way including taxes.

Ryanair has warned that time is running out to secure a copy of the 2009 Ryanair Cabin Crew Charity Calendar with just 1,000 copies of the calendar remaining online.

Ryanair today warned passengers against booking their summer holidays with flaky charter airlines or shoddy holiday companies as it predicted that the spate of airline bankruptcies, which disrupted the summer holiday plans of millions of passengers this year, looks set to continue into next year.

Ryanair today (2 December) launched a £1* one way ski fare for travel during the months of December, January and February to celebrate the early start of the ski season.

Ryanair yesterday voiced its objection to the awards given to London Heathrow and Manchester Airports at the recent British Travel Awards.

Ryanair has confirmed that its campaign to defend the rights of girls to take their clothes off for charity is taking YouTube by storm with over 150,000 people logging on to view behind the scenes footage of the making of Ryanair’s Cabin Crew Charity Calendar 2009, which UK politician Mary Honeyball criticised as ‘soft porn’.

Ryanair has today (26 November) announced its sixth route from London Gatwick with the launch of a new daily service to/from Dusseldorf (Weeze) from 7 January 2009. This follows Ryanair’s recent announcement of routes from Gatwick to Barcelona (Girona) and Alicante.

Ryanair has slammed proposals by Blackpool Airport to introduce an Airport Development Fee with effect from 5 January 2009. This fee will be levied on all passengers without exception after that date and will increase the cost of travel through this small regional airport.

In Liverpool yesterday, Ryanair (Tuesday 25 November 2008) condemned the UK Government's increase in air passenger duty (APD) for short haul traffic from £10 to £11 in 2009 and £12 in 2010 as regressive, damaging to the UK tourism industry (when visitor numbers are already falling) and devastating for regional airports where passengers and visitors demand low fares and are most price sensitive.

Ryanair has announced it will close the routes in and out of Maastricht Aachen Airport (MAA) as per January 8th 2009. During the winter months the Dutch governments “ecotax” hinders the sustainability of the operations. The airport and Ryanair are in negotiation regarding the continuation of flights during the 2009 summer season.

Ryanair has confirmed that it will close all of its routes to/from Fuerteventura from 31 January unless local tourism group AIE honours the commercial agreement it entered into with Ryanair to promote Fuerteventura as a tourist destination.

Ryanair announced yesterday that it will dramatically reduce the cost of its annual multi-trip travel insurance by 45%, slashing the cost of annual travel insurances to just £25 and, unlike other insurance policies, Ryanair’s low cost standard annual multi-trip insurance does not require applicants to hold high cost private health insurance.

Ryanair has today (Tuesday, 18th November 2008) released 500,000 free seats for travel throughout Europe in December, January and February as it celebrated the launch of two new London (Gatwick) routes to Barcelona Girona (daily) and Alicante (twice daily) from the 18th December, increasing the number of routes Ryanair operates from Gatwick to five.

Ryanair has announced the appointment of John Booty as Sales & Marketing Manager, UK & Ireland.

Ryanair has extended its partnership agreement with coach operator Terravision which will continue to offer great value coach services to Ryanair passengers travelling from Ryanair’s airports in Rome, Milan, Liverpool, London - Luton, London - Stansted, Pisa, Dublin, Bratislava, Verona, and Venice.

Ryanair announced half year profits of €215m, 47% down on last year’s interim profits as half year fuel costs more than doubled from €392.7m to €788.5m. Traffic however grew by 19% to 32m, as average fares fell by 4% to €47, while total revenues grew by 16% to €1.8bn.