This is where it will become a direct competitor to national airline Tarom, which had the monopoly of domestic flights until this year and Blue Air, which resumed flights on the Bucharest-Iasi route this fall.
“We expect to have 10 million passengers in Romania in five years (…),” said Michael O’Leary, chief executive officer of Ryanair, a company that carries 105 million passengers a year on more than 1,600 routes.
Ryanair operates from 12 airports in Poland and has four bases there. Its business in Romania should be similar to Poland’s over the next few years. The company only needs to reach an agreement with the airports, O’Leary says, adding he expects the airline to have four or five bases in Romania in the next five years and fly to and from 10 to 12 airports in this country.
Ryanair’s operation in Romania is small at the moment, with the airline having transported 200,000 passengers in 2014. In comparison, market leader Wizz Air carried 3.9 million people, followed by Tarom, 2.3 million.
Its officials have previously said they expect to carry 700,000 people to and from Romania this year.
The low cost airline’s plans for Romania are part of a greater growth strategy for the entire Central and Eastern Europe. It aims to become the leading airline in Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria in the next four to five years, its CEO says.
Michael O’Leary believes Romania has a lot of potential because of the population numbers and the developing economy. He is familiar with the country, which he first knew back in the days of the communist regime, when Ryanair used to lease aircraft from Tarom. Back then he would travel to Bucharest to meet the management of the state-run airline twice a year.
Ryanair’s CEO also thinks there is room for growth on the domestic flight segment, as well, where Tarom still is the dominant player. Ryanair is in talks with the representatives of the airports in Constanta and Targu Mures, as well as of other airports to open routes, as it intends to both increase the number of international flights and launch domestic flights, Michael O’Leary said. The airline is looking at three domestic routes in particular, he added.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)