Ryanair announces new winter routes from Birmingham Airport

The Ireland-based budget airline now has six of its jets based at the airport – an investment of more than £530 million.

Its winter 2023-2024 schedule for Birmingham totals 34 routes, including four new routes to Budapest, Girona, Seville, and Valencia as well as increased frequencies on another 11 routes, including Krakow, Malta, and Turin.

Ryanair's investment at Birmingham is supporting more than 2,200 local jobs including 180 highly-paid aviation roles.

Three of its aircraft based there will be Boeing 737 Gamechangers, which are highly sought by airports throughout Europe as they reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 16 per cent and noise emissions by 40 per cent as well as carrying four per cent more passengers.

The new routes will contibute to the airline's Birmingham traffic growing to 2.7 million passengers a year.

Ryanair now operates more than 440 routes and carries over 52m passengers annually to and from the UK on its fleet of 107 UK-based aircraft

Ryanair’s director of digital and marketing Dara Brady, said the airline was offering its customers in the West Midlands unbeatable choice at the lowest fares.

"This schedule will operate on Ryanair’s six based aircraft at Birmingham Airport, representing a 600 million euro investment and supporting over 2,200 local jobs. This includes, three of Ryanair’s quieter, lower emission “Gamechanger” aircraft," he said.

Mr Brady added that as Ryanair continues to invest and grow in Britain, UK National Air TrafficServices' air traffic control remains the biggest risk to passengers’ travel plans.

"Ryanair pays NATS almost 100m euros per annum for an ATC service that is repeatedly short-staffed and, on August 28 collapsed altogether, causing the cancellation of more than 2,000 flights (over 360,000 passengers) and long delays to more than 5,000 flights (900,000 passengers) without plausible explanation.

"NATS followed this latest shambles with more flight disruptions at Gatwick due to staff shortages. Ryanair calls again on Transport Minister, Mark Harper, to immediately instruct NATS (where the UK Governmentt owns a majority) to reimburse all its airline customers for the costs they suffered due to NATS incompetence on August 28 and urgently reform UK ATC to ensure that such avoidable system collapses do not recur."

To celebrate Ryanair’s winter schedule at Birmingham Airport and its new routes, the airline has launched a limited-time seat sale with fares from £21.99, which must be booked by Octonber 20 at ryanair.com