LONDON – Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair has announced that it will be opening up three new UK routes from Manchester, Liverpool and Teesside. In addition to these new routes, the airline will also be increasing its summer 2021 seat capacity to Greece, by increase service frequencies to popular destinations such as Chania, Corfu, Kos, Rhodes and Santorini. The new increased frequencies are currently due to commence from July.

Plans for the increased services and new routes will likely rely on the success of the UK’s vaccination program and the addition of perhaps a vaccine passport which could become the only way people will be allowed to enter a country without needing to do 14 days of self-isolation, while discussions on this continue, however, Ryanair feels confident that they will be able to commence these routes and that travel demand will increase over the summer.

Ryanair’s Director of Commercial, Jason McGuinness, said: “As vaccination rollout programmes continue in the coming months, air traffic is set to soar and we are delighted to announce three new routes and extra flights connecting the UK to a host of popular Greek destinations this summer. Mindful that Covid restrictions change regularly, customers can now book flights for a well-deserved break knowing that if they need to postpone or change their travel dates, they can do so up to two times with a zero change fee until the end of October 2021.”

While Ryanair seems hopeful that the demand to travel will return this summer, not all airlines agree with Wizz Air CEO Jozef Varadi reporting just last week that the carrier was not so optimistic about a summer restart as it once was due to the delays in the vaccine roll out across Europe. While the vaccine program in Europe may not affect the UK, any changes in European based airlines and travellers looking to travel to Greece could see restrictions reimposed across the popular holiday destinations.