Tag Archives: November 2003

Our Friends Ryanair

Plenty of news about our friends Ryanair.

Despite their difficulties with court cases with the European Union about state aid, (whether Ryanair received unfair state subsidies at its Belgian hub of Charleroi) Ryanair has announced two new European bases in Rome and Barcelona. The new bases would start from January 28 and February 5 2004 respectively, adding 12 routes to its rapidly expanding network.

And the bad news: Ryanair is to close all its recently-opened intra-Nordic routes due to weak demand and switch capacity to destinations outside the region. They plan to end flights from Sweden’s Skavsta to Oslo in Norway, Tampere in Finland and Arhus in Denmark from January 14 2004. Ryanair added in a statement it was also shutting its flights from London to Ostend in Belgium, Maastricht in the Netherlands and to the French destinations of Reims and Clermont.

The good news: new routes will be from London Stansted to Linz in Austria, Bari in Italy, Erfurt in Germany, Jerez in Spain, and from France’s Charleroi to Calladolid in Spain.

You really wanted to know this, didn’t you: you can now buy Ryanair gift vouchers: for more info, see: http://www.ryanairvouchers.com/They say you can choose from 135 routes across 16 different countries (does that include flying into the wrong country – Beetle?) and that for every voucher bought Ryanair will make a £1/€1 donation to charity

Fave Website: Travel Tips

Mac spotted a website www.walkabouttravelgear.com that has a lot of good travel tips. He says: they include using empty gatoraide bottles for water instead of water bottles as the gatorade bottles are more leak proof. Another suggestion was to put duct tape around a pencil to carry duct tape that way and use less space. Someone suggested for both men and women to wear silk pantyhose (maybe they did not have to be silk) for warmth. Someone suggested silk clothes for warmth. Another person suggested taking vitamin B pills or chewing garlic pills to ward off mosquitoes bites. They don’t like the smell. Don’t use perfumes on your hair etc to avoid mosquitoes. Someone suggested an all purpose gel (for washing etc)