Ryanair Dublin flight rekindles calls for more low-cost services

Ryanair's first flight from Dublin landed at Malta International Airport yesterday, with hoteliers confident its popularity would attract more tourists to the island.

The low-cost carrier, which already operates flights between Malta and London's Luton airport and Pisa in Italy, offers the Dublin-Malta service three times a week, on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Flight FR 7242 arrives at Malta International Airport at 11.55 a.m. with the return flight FR7243 to Dublin at 12.25 p.m.

To mark the new service, Ryanair is offering seats to Dublin, London and Pisa at €4.99 (one way and excluding taxes and charges).

Flights started being offered on www.ryanair.com from midnight last night.

To avail themselves of the offer, clients should book flights by Monday to travel between February 16 and June 30. The offer is applicable for flights on Monday and Sunday, subject to availability. The inaugural flight yesterday brought 149 passengers, who, together with the crew, were welcomed by Malta International Airport officials.

The passengers were presented with four varieties of Camilleri Wines, namely Palatino Chardonnay, Palatino Syrah, Palatino Merlot and the Palatino Cabernet Sauvignon, all produced from grapes fully grown and harvested here.

Welcoming the Dublin service, the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association (MHRA) said there were indications the flight would be a popular route that would bring in more tourists.

MHRA president Josef Formosa Gauci described the new service as "another step in the process of opening up the Maltese Islands to low-cost carriers in line with the growth trend of this source of business internationally". The MHRA had lobbied heavily with the authorities in favour of low-cost airlines, he recalled. The MHRA felt, however, that the process took far too long to come to a conclusion and the results to date are still only scratching the surface.

"Combined efforts need to continue to ensure that we maximise the seat capacity into Malta while ensuring that Air Malta is given the necessary support to take the decisions needed for the national airline to remain sustainable," the MHRA said.

It said the German market was still underserved by low-cost flights while the UK market would definitely benefit from more routes in addition to the ones already served. There were other markets too that should be opened to low-cost flights as soon as possible as "operators in this sector of the economy cannot afford to go through a similar year as 2006".

The MHRA cautioned that while initial figures for the tourism industry in 2007 show a very small growth over last year, it must be emphasised that 2006 had been a disastrous year for the industry and thus it should not be used as a benchmark.

There need to be a double-digit percentage growth this year if tourism is to recuperate the blows of the last two years, the association added. "Anything less would signify a failure to achieve the growth levels originally forecast for the three-year period 2005 to 2007," it said.

Bridget Dowling, Ryanair's sales and marketing manager for Southern Europe, said the company has sold over 80,000 seats to date on its three routes - London, Pisa and Dublin - to Malta. She hoped "the Maltese government will expand its initiative to many routes to ensure that tourism to Malta continues to grow".