14.02.22

A 20 YEAR “LOVE AFFAIR” BETWEEN RYANAIR AND MILAN BERGAMO AIRPORT

14 February 2002 saw the beginning of a twenty-year collaboration between Ryanair, SACBO and Milan Bergamo Airport. The relationship was inaugurated with the incoming flight from Frankfurt Hahn, which hosted the wedding between Anja Schmitz and Thomas Pluta from the town of Andernach. Ryanair opened the route to and from London Stansted in April of the same year. In 2003, a year on from the inaugural flight, the CEO of Ryanair Michael O’Leary inaugurated the Irish airline’s base in Bergamo, with the positioning of 3 aircraft and the reaching of 1.3 million passengers in just twelve months.

Over the last 20 years, Ryanair has invested extensively in its presence and operations at Milan Bergamo, increasing both the number of aircraft based there and the number of international and domestic routes, strengthening the role of Bergamo as Ryanair’s main Italian base. From the 34 million passengers transported to and from Milan Bergamo Airport in the first decade of activity, at the end of 2019 Ryanair reached a total of 110 million passengers.

Following the pause imposed by the pandemic, the Irish airline spearheaded the recovery of the air transportation sector, assigning the first of its new ecological B737-800 Gamechanger aircraft to Bergamo in July 2021. 11 of the 20 aircraft currently based at Bergamo are Gamechangers, reducing Ryanair’s fuel consumption, CO₂ emissions and noise emissions at Bergamo.

This twentieth anniversary year for Ryanair and Bergamo promises to be the best ever for Bergamo, with 109 summer routes operated by Ryanair from Milan Bergamo, which will be seeing even more passengers in 2022 than in the pre-COVID 2019 period.