Ryanair to fly Gatwick to Barcelona and Alicante

[November 19th 2008]

Low cost airline Ryanair is increasing its flights from Gatwick airport with two new routes to Alicante and Barcelona Girona.

Flights to Alicante will operate twice daily and flights to Barcelona Girona daily from December 18th, increasing the number of routes Ryanair offers from Gatwick airport to five.

To celebrate the launch of the new flights from Gatwick, Ryanair is offering 500,000 free seats for travel throughout Europe in December, January and February. Free flights are available until midnight on Friday November 21st.

“Ryanair is delighted to announce two new routes to/from London Gatwick to Barcelona and Alicante from 18th December. In 2009 Ryanair will bring its guaranteed lowest fares and no fuel surcharges to 65 million passengers,” said Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, at the launch of the new flights.

Ryanair also offers flights from Gatwick to the Irish cities of Cork, Dublin and Shannon. It is not known at this stage whether Ryanair plans to build up its presence at Gatwick and offer more flights from the Sussex airport.

Michael O’Leary has also been defending the airline’s decision to publish a “sexy” calendar for charity featuring some of its female cabin crew. Yesterday O’Leary donned “none-too-sexy” swimwear and joined cabin crew calendar stars Charlotte from Bristol and Ingrid from Dublin to officially launch the calendar.

The Women’s Institute in Spain has already attacked Ryanair as “sexist” over the calendar and has threatened legal action against Ryanair because the calendar only features women.

“We have the best looking cabin crew in Europe, over 700 of whom applied to take part in this year’s calendar and we continue to defend the rights of girls (and boys) to strip off for charity if they want to,” said O’Leary.

The 2009 Ryanair Cabin Crew Charity Calendar is on sale priced €10. The calendar has a print run of 10,000 and Ryanair is hoping to donate the entire €100,000 to charity.

“Loony groups like the various Institutes for Ugly Women are simply jealous of our good looking girls and just don’t understand that if we featured ugly blokes like me no one would buy our calendar and we would raise nothing for charity,” said O’Leary.

Written by: Nick Purdom