Ryanair has announced a range of £16.99 sterling fares on flights from British airports to other European destinations. The airline has already marketed 5,000 seats from Ireland to UK destinations at £10 fares. It will be making a further announcement about its Irish routes today.
The airline said it is making a million seats available at £16.99 one-way across 26 European routes for travel between September 22nd and December 16th. The British seat sale began yesterday.
The sale is Ryanair's response to a recent British Airways offer which lasted for 36 hours.
The £16.99 one-way fares will be on offer for flights from Stansted to Rimini in Italy, to Kristianstad in Sweden, and to St Etienne in France.
There will also be £16.99 oneway flights from Luton to Dublin, from Liverpool to Dublin and from Stansted to Prestwick in Scotland.
In addition, Ryanair is bringing in £19.99 one-way fares from all its British regional airports to Dublin. Sale fares include flights at £29.99 one-way to Pisa in Italy, Stockholm, Carcassonne in France and to Oslo.
Ryanair's chief executive, Mr Michael O'Leary, said in London yesterday: "British Airways' attempt at a seat sale was a nonevent - with no low fares, impossible to book and very little availability. Yet again Ryanair will have to show BA how a lowfare seat sale should be run."
Fares from Britain include the £10 airport departure tax but the return flights do not include local taxes.
Mr O'Leary added: "There's probably only room for two major low-cost carriers in the market. We will be one of them and time will tell who the other will be."
He said he was unconcerned about the arrival of BA's low-cost carrier, Go: "You must realise we carry five million passengers a year and Go will be lucky to reach 400,000 in its first 12 months."