Ryanair announces its winter schedule

Ryanair will follow standard practice and scale down routes this winter, temporarily halting operations from Malta to Seville, Valencia and Girona. However, it will fly to Madrid with two services per week, one less than summer. Ryanair had also stopped operating flights from Malta to Seville and Girona last winter. Announcing Ryanair’s winter schedule yesterday, the airline’s Malta marketing manager Luis Fernández-Mellado said the financial crisis in Spain meant demand for the routes in winter was very low. This coupled with high fuel prices worldwide and the hike in Spanish airport taxes last July meant “there is no justification” to maintain the routes in winter, he said, warning that fares to Spain are likely to increase slightly next summer. Ryanair will operate a total of 36 weekly flights from Malta this winter, down from 75 at the height of summer and one less than last winter’s schedule. In addition to Madrid, Ryanair will fly to six destinations in the UK, six to Italy, one to Ireland (Dublin), one to Sweden (Stockholm Skavsta), one to France (Marseille) and one to the Netherlands (Eindhoven). There will be just one flight a week to Stockholm and Edinburgh; two per week...