The head of Irish low cost airline Ryanair, Michael O’Leary, said this week that the goal for Faro Airport includes creating new routes and doubling the number of passengers from 1.5 million to 3 million.
Ryanair’s goal for Portugal is to increase the total number of passengers in the coming years from the current 3.5 million to 10 million, he told a press conference in Porto.
He also confirmed that he was negotiating with the Algarve’s tourism entities to establish new winter routes in Faro.
At Faro airport, Ryanair plans to create two new routes and duplicate the number of clients from 1.5 million to about three million.
According to Michael O’Leary, the company is also thinking about creating three or four new routes in Porto in the near future and there are other plans in the pipeline.
“We hope to have an airport in Lisbon within the next year or year-and-a-half,” he said (see story on page 7).
Last year, Ryanair carried 3.5 million passengers in Portugal and estimates an increase to 3.8 million passengers for this year.
