Irish low-cost airline Ryanair will open a new base at the Timisoara International Airport in western Romania, its first in the local market. The carrier will launch several international routes from Timisoara and will also have domestic flights to the capital Bucharest.

The new base, which is the company’s 78th, will have one based aircraft and will be operational starting November 1 this year. Ryanair’s investment amounts to nearly USD 100 million, which stands for the cost of the aircraft, the company has announced.

The airline will operate both international and domestic flights from Timisoara. There will be six new routes to Berlin, Brussels Charleroi, Dusseldorf Weeze, Frankfurt Hahn, London Stansted, and Milan Bergamo, and a new route to Bucharest with a frequency of two flights per day.

The flights to London Stansted will be operated daily, those to Milan Bergamo – five times a week, the flights to Brussels Charleroi – three times a week, and those to Berlin, Dusseldorf Weeze and Frankfurt Hahn – twice a week.

“To celebrate our new base in Timisoara, we’re selling 100,000 tickets for prices starting at EUR 19.99 for trips in November and December, available for booking until midnight Tuesday, January 19,” said David O’Brien, Chief Commercial Officer, Ryanair.

Ryanair expects to serve 575,000 customers per year from the Timisoara base, which would help it increase its local business by abut 50%. The Irish carrier currently operates eight routes from Bucharest and will launch a new one to Athens starting end-March. It expects 1.2 million passengers per year on these nine routes.

Ryanair aims to become the market leader in Romania, where it is now only the third biggest low-cost airline, after Hungarian Wizz Air and local Blue Air.

Ryanair is also the second low-cost carrier to launch internal flights after Blue Air launched flights from Bucharest to Iasi, in October last year. The internal flights market has been for many years the monopoly of state-owned airline Tarom.

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Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com