Will other budget airlines such as Iberia Express, easyJet and Wizz Air capitalise on Ryanair’s decision to slash 36 flight connections to Spain and set up their own routes to the country’s smaller regional airports?
Rival airlines could soon swoop in and take on flight routes dropped by budget airline Ryanair, following news the Irish company will be slashing flights in Spain this winter.
However, when flights were cut earlier in 2025, no airline ended up replacing the routes, so there’s still a good chance parts of Spain head into the winter season without any air renewed connections.
This comes after Ryanair’s CEO Eddie Wilson held a press conference in Madrid on Wednesday in which he confirmed that the budget airline’s threats to reduce its operations in Spain will indeed be carried out.
All in all, 1 million fewer passenger seats and 36 less flight connections with Spain. This comes after the airline already cut 13 Spain flight routes in early 2025, reducing passenger numbers by 800,000.
READ ALSO: All the flight routes to Spain that Ryanair will axe by winter
Ryanair’s cutbacks in smaller and regional travel hubs has opened a vacuum that other low-cost airlines like Iberia Express and Wizz Air could potentially fill. None of this is confirmed as of yet, but several reports in the Spanish media suggest that other airlines are indeed trying to fill the void. Any changes could also potentially not come into effect until next winter, meaning there could be dead travel zones this year in some parts of Spain.
Iberia Express, Iberia’s short-haul subsidiary, has responded with an increase in the Canary Islands of around 30,000 seats between October 2025 and January 2026. The company is adding 116 additional flights and increasing the number of seats available.
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The reinforcement focuses on Tenerife North, with 15,000 extra seats and up to several daily connections with Madrid, and Gran Canaria, with 8,300 additional seats and 10 daily flights. Tenerife South adds 850 seats and Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and La Palma add 4,500. The airline offers promotional prices for residents, with flights from as little as €13 to Madrid.
Hungarian airline Wizz Air is also finalising a bolstered offering in Spain, with almost 40 new routes to be added between March 2025 and March 2026 from 16 airports. Destinations include London Luton from several Spanish cities, as well as new routes to Poland and Macedonia.
In the Canary Islands, Wizz Air operates 15 routes to 10 destinations in five countries, offering more than one million seats in 2025. Since the start of operations, it has carried more than 3.5 million passengers from the islands, including 600,000 in the last year alone.
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Volotea is also open to exploring Ryanair routes as long they fit in with its business model, although reportedly not in Santiago de Compostela, Vigo, Tenerife North and Valladolid, where the low-cost Spanish airline does not currently have bases.
Volotea sources explained to EFE news agency that it will analyse possible new routes if they are compatible with its ethos, which focuses on connecting small and medium-sized cities in Europe, and it is particularly interested in southern Europe and the airports where it already operates.
It does, however, already offer routes from Santander, Zaragoza and the Canary Islands. Reports in the Spanish media suggest that December could see the inauguration of a new Santander-Granada connection.
In Asturias, Volotea’s main base in Spain, it will continue to increase capacity and add new routes, such as a new connection with Madrid on 31 October. In 2025 the airline will offer 3.6 million seats in Spain, 10 percent more than in 2024 and 149 percent more than in 2019.
All in all, it does appear that some Ryanair rivals will make up for the shortfall left by the Irish carrier, but currently there is little to indicate that all of the slashed routes will be replaced, especially at Spain’s smaller regional airports.
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Ryanair’s battle with Spanish airport network
The dominant Irish airline has scaled back seats and routes in Spain due to an ongoing war of words with Spain’s airport operator Aena.
The reason given by Ryanair for this drastic reduction in its flight operations are Aena’s “excessive” airport fees, which are due to go up further next year. This reportedly makes the smaller regional airports in Spain in which Ryanair operates unprofitable, and it’s these which have been hit the most by the new flight cuts.
Ryanair has not disclosed exactly which of its Spanish flight routes will be cut in the coming months, telling The Local Spain that it had “nothing further to add this time”.
