Ryanair's Newly Bought Austrian Unit Laudamotion Announces Growth Initiatives

(RTTNews) - Ryanair Holdings Plc. (RYA.L, RYAAY) announced Tuesday that its 100% subsidiary Laudamotion GmbH, an Austrian low fares airline, has launched a series of exciting growth initiatives.

Ryanair, which completed the purchase of Laudamotion from NL Holdings in late December, said the initiatives includes increasing Lauda's fleet to 25 aircraft in summer '19. Lauda announced that it has signed LOI agreements with a number of lessors which will increase its Summer '20 fleet to 30 - all Airbus - aircraft, which will allow Lauda to grow its traffic from 4m guests in year 1 to 6m guests in year 2 to 7.5m guests in FY March 2021.

This summer, Laudamotion will operate 4 bases as it grows in Vienna from 4 to 8 aircraft, Dusseldorf 7 aircraft, Stuttgart 3 aircraft, and Palma 2 aircraft.

In winter 2019, the Vienna base will increase further to 11 aircraft, making Laudamotion Vienna's No.2 airline, just behind Austrian Airlines.

Laudamotion also announced details of up to 400 new jobs for pilots, cabin crew, and engineers across its 4 bases. Laudamotion's CEO, Andreas Gruber, said, "With the backing of Ryanair, Laudamotion is set to grow strongly over the next 3 years to carry 10m passengers p.a. We will release details of up to 20 new routes for winter 2019 once we have completed our airport and handling negotiations by the end of March."