Ryanair launches Summer 2020 schedule for Belgium, discusses environmental issues

105 routes, 4 new Summer 2020 routes, 9.1 million customers per annum

Ryanair today (26 Sept) launched its Belgian summer 2020 schedule, with 105 routes including 3 new Brussels Airport summer services to Catania, Krakow and Seville, and 1 new Brussels South Charleroi service to Tel Aviv, which will help deliver over 9.1 million customers p.a. in total and support 6,800* jobs at both Charleroi and Zaventem Airports.

Ryanair’s Brussels Summer 2020 schedule will deliver:

Brussels Airport:

• 3 new S20 routes to Catania (2 per week), Krakow (4) & Seville (4)
• Extra flights to Alicante (daily), Girona (4) & Milan Malpensa (2 daily)
• 20 routes in total
• 2.7m customers p.a
• 2,000* “on-site” jobs p.a.

Brussels South Charleroi:

• 1 new S20 route to Tel Aviv (4)
• Extra flights to Bologna (9), Bucharest (9), Malaga (daily), Rome (9), Palmero (5) Thessaloniki (daily)
• 85 routes in total
• 6.4m customers p.a.
• 4,800* “on-site” jobs p.a.

(Some of these new routes are only new for the Summer season, as they are launched in the Winter 2019-2020 season.)

Belgian consumers and visitors can now book their summer holidays on 105 routes as far out as October 2020, enjoying even lower fares and Ryanair’s customer care improvements.

To celebrate, Ryanair has launched a seat sale with fares from just €9.99 for travel until the end of November 2019, which must be booked by midnight Saturday (28 Sept), only on the ryanair.com website.

In Brussels, Ryanair’s Chief Marketing Officer Kenny Jacobs said:

“We are pleased to launch our Brussels Summer 2020 schedule, which includes 3 new Brussels Zaventem summer routes to Catania, Krakow and Seville, and 1 new Brussels Charleroi route to Tel Aviv, which will help deliver over 9.1m customers p.a. and support over 6,800* jobs at both Charleroi and Zaventem Airports. Belgian customers and visitors can book our new Summer 2020 routes as far out as October 2020.

To celebrate the launch of our Brussels Summer 2020 schedule we have seats for sale across our European network from just €9.99, which are available for booking until midnight Saturday (28 Sept). Since these amazing low prices will be snapped up quickly, customers should log onto www.ryanair.com and avoid missing out.”

Other information

During their press conference, Kenny Jacobs and Yann Delomez (country manager France, Benelux and Morocco) made some additional comments:

• New destinations and increased frequencies on some routes without a change in the number of Brussels- and Charleroi-based aircraft (resp. 4 and 8 planes) means that some other destinations need to be cancelled or operated with reduced frequencies. Ryanair could not elaborate on this
• Ryanair will carry 152 million customers in 2019 (+7%), making it the number one airline in Europe by the number of passengers
• The average Ryanair fare is 37 euros, the lowest in Europe
• With 9.1 million customers per annum in Belgium (6.4 million in Charleroi, 2.7 million in Brussels), Ryanair is the country’s number 2 airline behind Brussels Airlines and before TUI fly
• Ryanair is confident it will win the class action suit filed by Test-Achats/Aankoop, based on other similar cases in Europe
• Ryanair expects the first Boeing 737 MAX 200 to be delivered in Q4 2019 and to enter into service in February 2020. The late delivery will make the 2020 growth slower than anticipated
• Ryanair insists on its environmental performance (after being named one of the 10 worst polluters of the globe in a recent study that was based only on the ETS scheme):
• • It will pay €630 million in environmental taxes in 2020 (or rather airport departure taxes)
  • It is the first airline to publish monthly its CO2 emissions
  • It emits 66g CO2 per passenger and km, a figure that will be cut by 10% to less than 60g with new aircraft. This is also way less than driving a car
  • The new Boeing 737 MAX 200 aircraft will use 16% less fuel and make 40% less noise than the current 737-800 planes
  • Ryanair vows to eliminate non-recyclable plastics within 5 years

The new environmental policy of Ryanair is discussed elsewhere on this website.

*ACI research confirms up to 750 ‘on-site’ jobs are sustained at international airports for every 1m passengers