OREANDA-NEWS. Ryanair, the UK’s largest airline, today (31 July) announced that it would add additional daily frequencies from October on its five main Ireland-UK routes in a direct response to similar flight increases recently announced by Aer Lingus for the 2013-14 winter schedule. Aer Lingus’ decision to increase flight frequencies on these UK routes further undermines the discredited UKCC investigation into Ryanair’s 6 Ѕ year old minority (29%) stake in Aer Lingus. Confronted with incontrovertible evidence that competition between Ryanair and Aer Lingus has intensified, the UKCC has been reduced to inventing fairytale future “concerns” that Ryanair has “influence” over Aer Lingus or that this stake has or will lead to a lessening of competition.
 
The UKCC, in its provisional findings, has ignored, or excluded, 6 Ѕ years of evidence which totally disproves their bogus claims. It has failed to produce any evidence that competition would be lessened (or UK consumers penalised) when the European Commission recently (Feb 2013) prohibited Ryanair’s offer for Aer Lingus on the very grounds that competition has intensified between the two Irish airlines over the past 6Ѕ years. If, as the UKCC now claims, Ryanair has “influence” over Aer Lingus which “might” lessen competition, then it should explain why Aer Lingus has recently increased flights on the five main Ireland-UK routes or why Ryanair is now responding with yet more flight frequency, which will lead to lower prices and better deals for those few UK consumers who actually fly Aer Lingus.
 
Ryanair will add at least one additional daily return flight from October 2013 to each of its top 5 Dublin-UK routes including London (STN), Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Bristol.