Over 90% of pilots offered employment contracts with increased remuneration in the new Ryanair/Buzz operation from 1 April have accepted. The balance comprise mainly of employees still on leave. Ryanair now has sufficient personnel to re-launch 13 of Buzzå‘s 24 routes, with increased frequencies (over those previously offered by Buzz) and at fares that start at half the price previously quoted by Buzz from 1 May onwards.
Passengers travelling on these routes over the next 12 months will save over €80m over the fares which were previously charged by Buzz.

In addition Ryanair

confirmed that it had made a special email offer to all former Buzz passengers (whose fares were fully refunded as a result of the cancellation of Buzz’s flights). A special offer to travel on these 13 routes during the month of May at half the price of the new Ryanair published low fares has been offered to them. In effect these people have already received a full refund of their Buzz fares and will now be able to book seats for flights during May at one quarter of the fares previously quoted by Buzz.

Ryanair expects that the rescued Buzz operation will over the first 12 months operate 8 aircraft, with a total of over 170 people, and will carry almost 3 million passengers at an average fare of just €43. This will be at half the average fare charged by Buzz last year, when with 10 aircraft and 610 employees, it carried less than 2 million passengers, at an average fare of over €80.

Ryanair confirmed that these new low fare seats to Germany, France and Spain would go on sale from 10:00 on Monday, 17 March (St Patrick’s Day), passengers are advised to book quickly as these seats should be snapped up.

Ryanair announces the sale of 1 million seats “for a tenner.” Ryanair also announced that to celebrate St Patrick’s Day, and the successful reorganisation of the loss making Buzz operation, it would celebrate by offering 1 million seats across all of its 59 (non Buzz) routes to/from London for just £10 one way (incl. Government taxes and airport charges).

This “one million seats for a tenner” offer will commence at midnight on Tuesday, 18 March 2003 and will be available for purchase at www.ryanair.com

until midnight on Thursday, 20 March. These seats will be available for travel subject to a three-day advance booking restriction from the 21 March until the 16 April, and there are over 1 million seats on sale at these crazy low prices for people who wish to book and travel within that period.

Related stories on ITN:

(28/02/2003) Ryanair Threatens to Close Buzz

(31/01/2003) Ryanair Buys Buzz for £15m

——-