RYANAIR is to axe more routes from Belfast International Airport from next year it has emerged.
The Irish budget airline has already slashed its 2019 winter operation at Aldergrove in half from last year, dropping seven routes.
Now Ryanair has indicated that flights to Barcelona and Faro will not feature in its coming summer 2020 schedule from Belfast International.
The budget carrier had previously operated 14 routes from the airport during summer months.
Just nine routes will operate next summer, with 21 flights per week leaving Belfast International.
The airline has blamed the late delivery of up to 30 Boeing 737 Max aircraft, claiming it has forced it to cut a number of loss-making routes.
Ryanair had expected to start taking delivery of 30 new 737 Max planes in March and April 2020.
But the planes were grounded in March 2019 after two fatal crashes inside five months killed 346 people.
Delays in declaring the aircraft safe to fly has forced Ryanair to scale back its operation at Belfast International Airport.
The Irish airline initially announced in March that Malta and three Polish routes to Gdansk, Warsaw and Wroclaw would be dropped from its 2019 winter schedule. That left 20 flights flying out of Belfast International on nine routes from November 2019.
But flights to Manchester, Berlin and Lanzarote were also dropped from the schedule.
The Irish carrier is now flying out of Aldergrove just eight times a week on six routes, less than half the 13 routes it ran last winter.
As it stands, Ryanair’s summer 2020 operation from Belfast International will feature flights to: Alicante, Bergamo (Milan), Gdansk, Krakow, London Stansted, Malaga, Malta, Manchester and Warsaw.
The cuts are expected to significantly impact the steadily rising passenger numbers at Belfast International.
Official data from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) revealed that the Irish airport added two million passengers between 2015 and 2018, hitting 6.28 million last year.
The surging numbers were a contributing factor in the widely reported problems with queues at the airport’s security in the past year.
But the latest data from the CAA has revealed passenger numbers are already on the decline at Belfast International.
The airport saw a five per cent dip in passengers during the peak summer months of July and August 2019. A total of 1.28 million were recorded during the summer, almost 70,000 fewer than the 1.35 million from the summer of 2018.
It came as the north’s two other airports reported a rise in summer passenger numbers.
Belfast City Airport increased its numbers by 0.7 per cent to 508,889 from 2018, while City of Derry climbed 10.8 per cent to 39,837. However both airports are still below the number of summer passengers they recorded three years ago.
Belfast International Airport was bought by French infrastructure giant Vinci in April 2018.
Last year the airport turned a pre-tax profit of £6.5m, up from £6.2m in 2017.
The airport contacted for comment, none was forthcoming at the time of going to press.
Boeing this week offered Ryanair a glimmer of hope for its 2020 operations.
The US aircraft manufacturer said that it hoped to have safety checks and certification on control software for the 737 Max jets completed by the end of the year. It could see the planes back operating commercial routes from January.
