How Massive is Massive? Very according to Ryanair...

You have to hand it to Ryanair they certainly make a little go a very long way. Back in December they announced “massive expansion” at Edinburgh. In the words of Michael Winner, "Calm down dear." Ryanair's expansion is hardly that exciting. None of the routes are to operated daily, making them of limited use to business travellers. Starting in April the weekly frequencies are.

Alicante 4
Bremen 2
Frankfurt 3
Marseilles 2
Pisa 3

So it amounts, in total, to two extra flights a day from Edinburgh. All this is in addition to their flights from Edinburgh to Dublin (3 per day) and Shannon (4 per week).

Today we have Ryanair announcing “massive expansion” that will, according to Ryanair, indirectly create up to 1,200 jobs in Edinburgh and the east of Scotland. How so? Well they’ll employ another 100 people, jobs from other airport based companies will employ 100 people and the extra 1000 will be employed in tourism and hotel industries. They’ve announced the following services

Berlin 4 per week
Billund 3 x week
Bournemouth 13 x week
Bratislava 4 x week
Dusseldorf 2 x week
Krakow 3 x week
Lodz 2 x week
Malaga 4 week
Palma 3 x week
Poznan 3 x week
Stockholm 4 x wek
Wroclaw 2 x week

Before we all get over excited of the seventeen new Ryanair destinations nine are already served from Edinburgh

Alicante Easyjet & Flyglobespan
Billund – Cimber Air & Sun air
Frankfurt – Lufthansa
Krakow – Easyjet
Malaga – Flyglobespan
Palma – Air europa, First choice, Monarch, Mytravel, ThomsonFly, Easyjet & Flyglobespan
Pisa – Jet2com
Poznan – Centralwings
Stockholm – SAS

What’s all this going to achieve – not a lot. It’s very likely that on some of the routes there will be a bloodbath and one or another of the carriers will cease operating. It will not be, as the daft BAA spokesman said on the BBC, be great news for business travelers to Berlin and Stockholm. A four times a week service is next to useless.

Why the media and particularly the BBC pander to this tripe I’m not sure. It was the second item on the BBC Scotland TV News – they are guilty of being sold a dummy. And there’s a lot of water to go under the bridge before next September when the majority of these new Ryanair flights are scheduled to commence. I’d watch this space very closely…