Ryanair has announced that it will be operating a record number of services from Dublin this winter, thanks to the suspension of an air traffic cap imposed by the Irish government.
In winter 2025, Ryanair will be operating 96 routes from Dublin, including a new route to Rabat and increased frequencies on 28 other routes, including Birmingham, Budapest, Krakow, Milan and Valencia.
The expanded services will be supported by the addition of another Boeing 737 MAX 8-200 to the airline’s Dublin-based fleet.
Ryanair, which has dubbed the low cost-per-seat 737 aircraft the “Gamechanger”, said it invested $100 million in the acquisition.
The new aircraft also brings Ryanair’s Dublin-based fleet to a total of 35, for a total investment of $3.5bn.
In a statement, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said the expanded schedule has been made possible by the suspension of the Irish government’s “illegal” air traffic cap imposed on Dublin Airport.
In 2007, the Irish government introduced a planning condition that limited the number of passengers travelling through Dublin Airport to 32 million per year.
The measure, which was designed to reduce road traffic congestion, has since been challenged by daa, operator of Dublin Airport, as well as numerous airlines, including Ryanair.
In April 2025, Ireland's High Court agreed to extend a temporary suspension of the air traffic cap, pending a decision on the case by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
O’Leary said the suspension of the cap has allowed Ryanair to grow its traffic through Dublin Airport by 9% in 2025.
“While this is good news for Irish passengers, tourism and jobs, we and other airlines need this illegal cap to be urgently abolished by the government if we are to continue to invest in and grow Dublin traffic,” he said.
In February this year, Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheál Martin said his government would do “whatever it takes” to remove the cap.
Earlier this month, Transport Minister Darragh O'Brien confirmed that he will instruct the Cabinet in early October to begin the process of drafting legislation to remove the cap.
However, O’Brien also indicated that, if the legislation is enacted, the cap may not be removed until the end of 2026.
“The only gift we all want from Micheál Martin this Christmas is to keep his promise to scrap the illegal Dublin traffic cap ASAP," said O'Leary, "and certainly before Rudolph arrives on December 24th. Ho ho ho."