BERLIN – Ryanair (NASDAQ: RYAAY) plans to operate a full schedule of flights from Tel Aviv this summer and is hopeful that Ben Gurion Airport will reopen its shuttered Terminal 1, senior executive Eddie Wilson said in an interview on Thursday.
Ryanair is one of many airlines to have withdrawn from Israel due to the war in Gaza and Lebanon. It restarted flights from neighboring Jordan in December.
“We rely on (European aviation regulator) EASA guidance … but our view is that we will be back,” said Wilson, chief executive of Ryanair DAC, the largest of five subsidiary airlines operated by the Ryanair Group.
“We’ve got a full schedule, I think, for Tel Aviv…so we will be back in there for the summer as I think most of the other airlines will be,” Wilson said.
When asked about the reopening of Ben Gurion’s Terminal 1, which low-cost operators use, Wilson said, “We would hope that they would take the sensible decision to open that.”
Wilson, who was speaking in Berlin, said Ryanair planned to deploy two additional aircraft to regional airports in Germany this summer, offering 800,000 more seats.
However, he said it would not reverse the cuts of 1.8 million seats announced at bigger airports like Berlin, Hamburg, and Leipzig due to high airport charges.
“We will grow in Germany – it is just a question of when. And if it is not under this government, then it is under the next government,” Wilson said, adding that Ryanair’s German traffic could double to 34 million passengers in the medium term if access costs are cut.
Wilson declined to comment on current trading ahead of January 27 results but described European consumers as “remarkably resilient.”
