Ryanair cancel 57 flights from November from El Altet Airport

FROM November low cost airline Ryanair will cancel 40 per cent of flights between Alicante’s El Altet airport and other European destinations.

The cancellation of 57 direct flights by the airline will result in 2.5 million fewer passengers a year. Alicante Province’s president of the Chamber of Commerce Jose Enrique Garrigos described the move by Ryanair as being of a ‘third world’ mentality.

“What we want is to have a service, whether it is with Ryanair or another company, because we are poorly linked to Barcelona to fly to the East.” 

Garrigos is “confident” that they will “resolve the problem”, but will be meeting soon with El Altet airport director Santiago Martinez-Cavas to put a value on the loss of routes and how to generate new routes.

In May Aena assessed the possibility of conceding to Ryanair boss Micheal O’Leary’s request to continue embarking and disembarking passengers on foot at the new terminal rather than using the airbridges at an annual cost of around €2 million to the airline.

The results showed that while it would be possible for passengers to go on foot in during off-season, during the summer the extra traffic would make this ‘unsafe’.

The 57 flights will be discontinued at least until April 2012, according to Spanish media.