Ryanair Names Madrid as New Base

Budget airline Ryanair named Madrid as its eighteenth European base last week and said it would start flying from the Spanish capital by mid-November.

The Irish low-cost carrier said in a statement it would fly from Madrid to 14 destinations including Dublin, Paris, Brussels, Oslo, East Midlands and Bournemouth in the UK and Gothenburg and Malmo in Sweden.

Ryanair, which launched a $1.85 billion bid for Aer Lingus last week, said it expected to fly a million passengers a year on the new routes.

It already uses Girona Airport, near Barcelona, as a Spanish hub and flies to a baker’s dozen other destinations around the country.

Its rival, low-cost easyJet in August named Madrid as a base for European and domestic flights from February, but few of the two airlines’ routes will overlap.