Ryanair adds new winter routes, announces three-day seat sale

Ryanair will open three new routes from Malta to Katowice, Paris & Rome Fiumicino this winter, while adding extra flights on 19 existing routes, including to Athens, Catania, Edinburgh and Zagreb.

To promote the next flights, the airline is launching a three-day seat sale with 50,000 fares on sale from €19.99.

"As an island economy, it is vital that Ryanair continues to grow low-cost visitor access on a year-round basis to Malta," Ryanar CEO Michael O'Leary said at a press conference on Tuesday.

This winter schedule will be operated mainly on Ryanair's seven Malta-based aircraft, three of which are B-737 Gamechangers, which are expected to cut CO2 emissions by 16% and noise by 40%.

These new aircraft represent a $700 million investment in Malta, which will in turn support over 4,000 local jobs.

Ryanair's Malta traffic growth is up 24% this year - a record for the airline. Over the past 18years, the airline carried over 27 million passengers. Investments over the years include a €20 million three-bay maintenance faciility which is expected to create over 200 high-skilled local jobs, including engineers, mechanics and support staff.
ATC disruptions

Malta Air CEO David O'Brien said local air-traffic controller representatives have been causing a lot of disruption to the airline, and a meeting is scheduled with the Maltese minister to sort out the issues.

O'Leary said 99% of flight delays for the airline could be eliminated if ATC staffing shortages were resolved. "The overall savings would be hundreds of billions in the industry generally," he said. 

He also said the European Commission needs to take action to resolve these ATC staffing shortages and improve the European service. He noted that ATC fees are up 21% post-COVID.