The low-cost-high-fee Irish carrier, Ryanair, has announced the opening of a new base in the UK from next year.
The budget airline has confirmed that it will base three aircraft and start operating over 55 flights a week from Southend Airport next year. It believes it will operate 13 routes from the Essex airport and carry around one million passengers each year.
This latest base will be the fourteenth base for the airline and they say, will create around 750 local jobs. The planned new routes include five flights per week to Alicante and Malaga in Spain, twice daily flights to Dublin and other flights to Portugal, Italy and Venice.
Warwick Brady, the chief executive of Stobart Group, which owns and operates London Southend Airport, said Ryanair's move would help the airport's strategy to welcome more than five million passengers a year by 2022.
