Ryanair add new Shannon winter routes to Madrid, Lapland & Madeira & another aircraft

*Photograph: Arthur Ellis

RYANAIR’s growth at Shannon Airport continues with the addition of new winter routes to Madrid, Lapland and Madeira.

A fourth Ryanair aircraft has also been added to its Shannon base which brings with it thirty direct new jobs for pilots and cabin crew plus additional engineers. Ryanair have told The Clare Echo the additional aircraft will result indirectly in 200 new jobs for the Mid-West region.

As part of its winter schedule at Shannon for 2025 and 2026, Ryanair have added new routes to Lapland, Madeira and Madrid, in addition to extra flights on six existing popular routes – Alicante, Edinburgh, Kraków, Lanzarote, Manchester, and Wrocław. Ryanair has 20 routes from Shannon and will account for 1.6m of the Airport’s passenger numbers this year.

CEO of the Shannon Airport Group, Mary Considine described Ryanair as “a really valued airline partner” for Shannon and said the latest investment “indicates how important Shannon Airport is to Ryanair” and that it was “a real vote of confidence”. She said passenger numbers at Shannon Airport have grown by forty percent since 2022 with last year seeing a fifteen year high reached for passenger numbers.

Speaking in the viewing gallery of Shannon Airport on Wednesday morning, Ryanair Jason McGuinness quipped, “airports don’t usually talk about us that nicely so it is nice for a change to hear the kind words”. He emphasised Ryanair’s commitment to Shannon and said the airline was “the biggest investor in regional Ireland”. They are hopeful of announcing further new routes from Shannon in the future, he confirmed,

Over the past twelve months, Ryanair has recorded a 20 percent growth at Shannon compared with Cork (10%), Knock (16%) and Kerry (32%). The airline has 93 global bases, flies to 233 airports and 37 countries with 618 aircraft.

McGuinness was critical that the Irish Government has not acknowledged Ryanair’s growth plan which was submitted to them last year while he labelled the passenger cap at Dublin Airport “one of the most stupid things this Government has done”.

He was also critical of the Regional Airport Programmes which also has a cap in that airports must have 1.5m passengers or less to qualify, he said this should be increased to 3m. “The Government talk about balanced regional development, one thing they could do right now to help regional development is to reboot the Regional Airport Programme which has a cap, they need to increase the cap and allow airports like Shannon to put in capex’s for growth”.