Big day yesterday as Ryanair announced new bases in Athens and Thessaloniki continuing their greek expansion that started last year with a base in Chania.
Regarding Athens base, Ryanair have already uploaded the six new routes that will be available from late March and consist of 3 domestic and 3 international. The Irish will fly 5x/daily to Thes/ki, 2x/daily to Chania, 1x/daily to Rhodes, Milan Bergamo, London Stansted and Pafos.
Rhodes will get a single daily return flight -at least for the beginning- which is not sufficient in our humble opinion in such a trunk route. A morning and a late afternoon/evening are required minimum in order to provide 100% coverage of local market needs and of course seriously compete Aegean's 30 weekly return flights that increase up to 41 during high season. Another issue of this limited service is that London-Athens route doesn't allow catching same day Athens-Rhodes or vice versa flight while Milan-Athens passengers can continue to Rhodes after some hours in Athens airport but the opposite is not possible.
Anyway, the entrance of a second player in the Athens-Rhodes route is welcomed, we do expect the Irish to quickly add frequencies and of course Aegean to respond basically in offering better prices even for late bookers.
The actual route was uploaded today on Ryanair's website and is already available for bookings. Flights commence on Tuesday Apr. 1 and are bookable till Sep. 30, Athens departure will be 16:35pm and Rhodes 18:10pm on a daily basis.
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| FR landing @ RHO, Oct. 2013 - © R.A.T |
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