Ryanair to fly out of Brussels Airport from February

The low-cost airline Ryanair will begin flights out of Brussels Airport from February, with 10 new destinations, the company announced at a press conference yesterday in Brussels. Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said Brussels would be the airline’s second hub in Belgium after Charleroi and promised the move would create 1,500 new jobs.

The 10 destinations are Alicante, Malaga, Barcelona, Valencia, Palma, Ibiza, Lisbon, Porto, Rome and Venice. Ryanair has a target of 1.5 million passengers a year on the routes, which together make for 196 flights a week.

The Brussels routes are described as business flights, but it is not yet clear what that means exactly. Flights from Brussels will be more expensive than those from Charleroi, O’Leary said. “But our prices will only be half as high as those of Brussels Airlines. And if they bring their prices down, so will we.” He also stressed the importance of the company’s record in on-time flights and promised the introduction of reserved seating on the business flights.

Despite a statement from Brussels Airport that Ryanair does not have any slots at present, the airline’s website is already allowing bookings from Zaventem to Rome for 2014. For a flight in April, for example, Ryanair is offering prices between €48.99 and €69.99 departure and €48.99 to return.

The decision to start flying out of Brussels – described by O’Leary as “a logical development” – is nonetheless a major change in Ryanair’s strategy of concentrating on secondary regional airports like Charleroi, benefitting from sizeable government subsidies to keep prices as low as possible.

However, that strategy is increasingly coming under pressure from the EU, where it is considered to be a form of unfair competition. Yesterday the Walloon minister for airports, André Antoine, said Ryanair’s decision had been forced on the company by Brussels Airport, which for some time has talked of the possibility of a new low-fare terminal at Zaventem.

Brussels Airlines (BA), meanwhile, responded casually to the announcement. “Ryanair has been our competitor for 12 years. Now for the first time we will be competing on a level playing field,” said BA spokesperson Geert Sciot. “Ryanair is now coming to an airport where they have no advantage. They will pay an airport tax of €26 at Zaventem, instead of the €3 charged at Charleroi.”

Brussels Airport already serves low-cost airlines like EasyJet and Veuling, he said, and yet BA is able to hold its own. The company was prepared to compete with Ryanair on the basis of service, he said.

Also at the press conference, O’Leary said the company was in talks to start flying out of Schiphol, while leaving open the question of flights into and out of Ostend. Representatives of Schiphol later denied there was any conversation with Ryanair.