Ryanair expands flights from Bournemouth Airport

Ryanair will fly to 18 destinations from Bournemouth during the summer

Ryanair is set to expand the number of flights and destinations it flies to from Bournemouth Airport.

The budget airline will fly to Carcassonne, Edinburgh and Venice in summer 2023 and base a second aircraft at the Dorset airport.

Bournemouth Airport said it would bring passenger numbers up to pre-pandemic levels.

Ryanair already serves destinations from Bournemouth including Faro, Malta, Dublin and Tenerife.

At a press conference, Ryanair announced it would fly a total of 18 routes from Bournemouth during the summer as part of a £165m investment, which would support 550 local jobs.

Steve Gill, managing director of Bournemouth Airport, said it was a "huge vote of confidence" in the airport.

He said: "This is fantastic news for our passengers and offers even more choice from their local airport.

"We're on course to have recovered 95% of our pre-pandemic traffic by the end of this year having served 800,000 passengers and Ryanair has been a huge part of that."

Commercial passenger flights from the airport at Hurn all-but ended when the coronavirus pandemic hit in early 2020, with Ryanair resuming flights in December of that year.

Bournemouth Airport was used to park grounded British Airways planes when the pandemic took hold