Winter trimming

Seven bases will be shut from november 4th, and for 6 1/2 weeks:
Basel, Budapest, Krakow, Palma, Rzeszow, Salzburg, Valencia.

At Stansted : 15 planes will be grounded (8 more than last winter), meaning some 900.000 less RYR pax at STN.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=adss8VhZN4cI
http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/news.php?yr=08&month=jul&story=rte-en-170708

Don't let's panic ! By these difficult times (fuel, recession), it's vital to react quickly and do what is needed to preserve the airline and try to maintain some profitability or at least not to go in the red.
Every 5 or 6 years, there is a crisis in aviation - will ride this one over, as always, and go on expanding, hopefully as soon as next summer !

Of the seven destinations only Valencia is a base, are they closing the whole base?!?, I'm getting confused here.

The first message from Bloomberg was inaccurate (and I hadn't even seen that they were not all 7 a RYR base, shame on me !).
If you click now on the link, it shows an update which says : "Services to 7 mainland European airports will be halted for 45 days in november/december ..."
Anther source says that RYR will cancel services to Basel, Budapest, Krakow , Rzeszow, Palma, Valencia and Salzburg, from November 4 to December 19 :
http://news.ino.com/headlines/?newsid=68918678165710
ALL services ? It's not clear ...
Wait and see !
But the least one can say is that MOL reacts quickly to the current economic situation - only the most adaptable airlines will survive, and Ryanair will be one of them !

Ryanair is not closing the whole Valencia Base. But a few routes are going to be cut. For example Valencia-Billund will be closed.

From airliners.net:

Ryanair to stop flights to seven airports this winter
17/07/2008 - 11:47:57
Ryanair will stop its flights in and out of a number of European airports for a six-week period this winter. The airline blamed the price of oil and the cost of operations at the airports for its decision.
The affected airports are Basel, Budapest, Krakow, Palma, Rzeszow, Salzburg and Valencia.
Ryanair's operations will cease from Tuesday November 4 until Friday December 19.
"Costs at these airports are amongst the most expensive in Europe and far outweigh the potential revenue which passengers are prepared to pay, particularly during the off peak winter period," a Ryanair spokesman said.
Ryanair wrote to the airports seeking a reduction on the costs of these flights this winter but their response was "wholly inadequate", according to the airline.

I found some time to check out the winter schedule for Valencia. The routes that will be closed for the complete! winter schedule (not only November/December) are:

Valencia-Basel
Valencia-Billund
Valencia-Dublin
Valencia-Düsseldorf Weeze
Valencia-Karlsruhe Baden
Valencia-Stockholm Skavsta


The existing routes for Valencia in this period are:

Valencia-Bologna Forli (4 x weekly)
Valencia-Brussels Charleroi (4 x weekly)
Valencia-East Midlands (2 x weekly)
Valencia-Eindhoven (4 x weekly)
Valencia-Frankfurt Hahn (4 x weekly)
Valencia-Liverpool (2 x weekly)
Valencia-London Stansted (2 x daily)
Valencia-Maastricht (3 x weekly)
Valencia-Malta (3 x weekly)
Valencia-Milan Bergamo (daily)
Valencia-Paris Beauvais (4 x weekly)
Valencia-Pisa (daily)
Valencia-Porto (4 x weekly)
Valencia-Rome Ciampino (daily)
Valencia-Santiago de Compostela (3 x weekly)


I hope this Information will clear up the mystery about the winter operations of the Valencia base.

Im sure FR know what they are doing! This is probably just a temporary solution! As atoutprix wrote we will hopefully see FR expanding more next summer!

Update on the Valencia Base closure! For the period of the 4th November until 18th December the base will be closed down. Only the following five routes, carried out by aircraft stationed at other airports, will operate.

Valencia-Frankfurt Hahn (4 x weekly)
Valencia-London Stansted (1 or 2 x daily)
Valencia-Milan Bergamo (daily)
Valencia-Pisa (daily)
Valencia-Rome Ciampino (daily)

Bad news and it's definite! See my post 2 lines further up for base operations from the 18th December until end of March.

An FR crew member told me that FR are reviewing all the routes with a flight duration of more than 2.5 hrs.