Armenia becomes Ryanair’s 40th country served

Yesterday, 16th October, Ryanair announced that it will serve Armenia, with brand-new routes both to Yerevan, the capital, and Gyumri. This comes shortly before Ryanair begins its first services to both Tbilisi and Kutaisi, in neighbouring Georgia.

Ryanair will operate four routes to Armenia, providing up to eight weekly flights. It expects these to generate 130,000 passengers annually. All four are presently unserved, at both airport- and city-pair levels.

Route	Start date; period of operation	Days	Timings	City-level indirect passengers (two ways in the year to August 2019)
Berlin Schönefeld – Yerevan	31 March, 2020; summer only	Tuesday, Saturday	1500-2100; 2125-2325	18,600
Milan Bergamo -Yerevan	14 January, 2020; year-round	Tuesday, Saturday	Tuesday: 0600-1310; 1335-1445. Saturday: 1445-2155; 2220-2330	14,300
Allgäu Airport Memmingen – Gyumri	30 March, 2020; summer only	Monday, Friday	0730-1335; 1400-1605	0
Rome Ciampino – Yerevan	14 January, 2020; year-round	Tuesday, Saturday	1420-2115; 2140-2235	17,100
Source: OAG Traffic Analyser.

Armenia effectively has open skies with the EU, with other potential European opportunities from Yerevan – for whichever airlines – as follows. Armenia is a long way from Western Europe, so Ryanair’s routes are unsurprisingly the shorter ones, although all are still over 1,650 miles each way. Of the following, only Prague would be shorter. Madrid is long, at 2,500 miles.

City	Served?	Indirect passengers before stimulation (two ways in the year to August 2019)
Brussels	Yes	40,000 (partly so high as Brussels Airlines’ non-stop is seasonal and between once- and twice-weekly)
Prague	No	33,600
Amsterdam	No	30,000
London	No	26,000
Frankfurt	No	24,500
Barcelona	No	22,600
Munich	No	16,400
Stockholm	No	15,800
Madrid	No	14,900
Paris	Yes	14,900
Düsseldorf	No	14,200*
Source: OAG Traffic Analyser. * In this year period, Cologne was served and generated 11,000 passengers on its own. It too is now unserved.