Irish budget carrier Ryanair has announced it will introduce two additional routes from its base at Bologna’s Guglielmo Marconi Airport in Italy next summer. The low-cost carrier will offer a twice weekly link to Oslo Rygge and a three times weekly service to Manchester from April 1, 2014 and estimates generating around 80,000 additional passengers per year on the two routes.

Ryanair made its debut in Bologna in October 2008 and initially served just seven international markets from the largest city of the Emilia-Romagna Region in Northern Italy and the seventh most populous city in Italy. Within six months of operations it had based three aircraft at Guglielmo Marconi and boosted passenger numbers behind the one million milestone, passing two million in 2011. It now has five aircraft based at the airport is operating a network that now encompasses 36 routes (some are operated on a seasonal basis) across domestic and international markets, including recently introduced flights to Alghero and Catania.

The growth follows the signing of a new five year commercial agreement following the expiration of Ryanair’s original deal in October this year. Under this partnership the carrier is aiming to increase passenger numbers at Bologna by around 20 per cent, rising from the current level of 2.1 million a year to 2.5 million by 2018.

According to Antonello Bonolis, business aviation manager at Bologna’s Guglielmo Marconi Airport, the new agreement is “even more profitable” than the previous one, and rewards new development opportunities. From the beginning of its operations in October 2008 around nine million passengers have made use of Ryanair’s flights.

“The agreement launches another five-year period of cooperation, aiming at further growth despite the evident difficulties in this sector,” said Nazareno Ventola, general manager, Bologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport. “We share the target of increasing passengers who, from 2014, will enjoy a completely restyled air terminal with an enlarged destination offer and strengthened existing destinations”.

Ryanair is now the prominent carrier at Bologna and has helped drive passenger growth at Guglielmo Marconi. When it arrived in 2008 passenger numbers had fallen to 4.22 million but since then annual rises of 13.2 per cent in 2009, 15.3 per cent in 2010, 6.8 per cent in 2011 and 1.2 per cent in 2012 have helped boost traffic to 5.95 million. This year passenger numbers will increase by around four per cent with traffic up 3.7 per cent for the first eleven months of 2013.

In the table below we highlight Ryanair’s activities from Bologna and how it has emerged as Guglielmo Marconi’s largest air carrier over the past five years. In its first full year of operations the low-cost carrier had secured a 22.6 per cent share of capacity and already positioned itself as the largest carrier from the Italian airport. In the subsequent years this has risen beyond the 30 per cent figure reaching a high of 36.1 per cent in 2012.