With half of August gone in a blink of an eye, it may come as a shock to be talking about October half-term holidays, but budget airline Ryanair has announced an additional 500 flights over the period.
The move will add 100,000 more seats to popular holiday destinations from London Stansted to Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, and France starting from £25.29. Ryanair's chief executive Michael O'Leary announced the increase in a statement that also hit out at 'mismanagement' at 'hopeless Heathrow'.
On Monday, Heathrow said its flight cap would be extended a further six weeks to October 29. The 100,000 passenger per day cap was initially set to end on September 11.
"While hopeless Heathrow continues to cut flights and raise fares for families, Ryanair and London Stansted continue to add flights, and offer thousands of low-fare seats for the autumn mid-term break," said O'Leary.
"With over 500 additional flights, more than 100,000 additional seats and prices starting from just 29.99 euros (£25.29), Ryanair looks forward to welcoming thousands of additional families during the autumn mid-term break on its low-fare flights to/from London Stansted Airport.
The Ryanair boss added: "While hopeless Heathrow continues to mismanage air travel, Ryanair and London Stansted will continue to grow and deliver for London families, the way we have through all of summer 2022."
However, John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow's chief executive, accused airlines of not increasing ground-handling resources in comments to the Daily Mail - and warned that travel chaos could continue another six or 12 months.
He said: "So we've seen no change in airline behaviour towards ground-handling, and unless something changes radically, we're going to be in the same situation in six months' time or maybe even 12 months. We really need to fix this. It's not just Heathrow, it applies to all airports across Europe.'
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