7 new routes: Ryanair announces record summer schedule for London airports

Low-cost airline Ryanair has unveiled its largest ever summer schedule for three London airports: Gatwick, Luton and Stansted. The airline offers 200 routes, including seven new services. From Stansted, it will launch connections to Basel, Dubrovnik, Sarajevo, Poprad, Tatras and Tirana, and from Luton, there will be flight to Treviso and Palma.

Ryanair will base two new B737s in London, bringing its total number to 56, Travel Weekly reports. The company said that this is a $200 million investment that will create more than 150 new jobs for pilots, flight attendants and engineers. The number of passengers from London is expected to exceed 30 million this year, up from 27 million in 2023.

In announcing the new routes, Michael O'Leary, the group's chief executive, used the occasion to reiterate his calls for Martin Rolfe, the chief executive of the UK Nats, to step down, and to criticize travel agencies that "scrub the screen" of Ryanair's website.

His criticism of Nats followed high-profile delays caused by air traffic control last year.

"While Ryanair continues to invest and grow in London, the UK's Nats air traffic control system continues to be an inefficient wreck that threatens passenger plans and traffic growth in the UK," he said. "Nats' repeated failures in June, August and December 2023 caused thousands of cancellations and delays for millions of British passengers."