Ryanair will base a sixth aircraft at Liverpool John Lennon Airport for Winter 2026 and add six new routes, a U.S.$600 million investment the airline says will lift Liverpool traffic by about twenty-four percent.
In a September 24 corporate release, Ryanair said the extra based Boeing 737 will deliver roughly one hundred thousand additional seats—an eleven percent capacity increase at the airport—and support more than 2,130 local jobs. The Winter 2026 Liverpool schedule will cover twenty-seven routes and about one million seats.
The six new services link Liverpool with Milan Bergamo, Copenhagen, Gdańsk, Porto, Tirana and Warsaw. Ryanair is also adding frequency on three existing city-break routes to Kraków, Kaunas and Cork, thickening the short-haul web without opening long-haul flying from the Merseyside airport.
Chief Marketing Officer Dara Brady framed the sixth aircraft as continued Northwest England growth while renewing the airline’s campaign against UK Air Passenger Duty, which Ryanair calls the highest aviation tax in Europe. The carrier again urged the UK government to abolish APD if it wants regional airports to match traffic growth in EU markets that are cutting aviation taxes.
Brady also used the Liverpool podium to call for a change of leadership at NATS after recent UK air-traffic control disruptions, tying operational resilience to Ryanair’s willingness to keep adding based aircraft outside London. That political message sat beside the concrete capacity math of one extra 737 and six new destinations.
Liverpool John Lennon Airport chief executive John Irving welcomed the sixth based aircraft for the winter season, saying the extra flying will give passengers across the Northwest and North Wales more low-fare choice from the regional airport branded as Faster, Easier, Friendlier.
To mark the announcement Ryanair opened a limited-time seat sale with fares from £29.99 on ryanair.com. The airline positions Liverpool traffic on a path above 2.6 million passengers a year under the enlarged winter plan.
The Liverpool package sits alongside a parallel Manchester Winter 2026 move—a nineteenth based aircraft and a new Warsaw Modlin route—announced the same day. Together the Northwest bases underline Ryanair’s preference for adding metal at secondary UK airports even as it criticizes national tax policy.
Operationally the new Liverpool spokes are classic Ryanair short-haul leisure and city-break markets on Boeing 737-800 equipment drawn from the based fleet. Exact winter frequencies were not broken out route-by-route in the corporate note beyond the six new destinations and the three frequency increases.
For Northwest travelers the practical gain is new nonstops to northern Italy, Scandinavia, Poland, Portugal and Albania without routing over London. Porto stands out as the clearest winter-sun option in the six-route set, while Gdańsk, Warsaw and Copenhagen deepen the Baltic and Nordic city-break offer.
Ryanair’s Liverpool Winter 2026 plan therefore pairs one incremental based aircraft with a measurable route add, locking in higher seat volume for the season that begins later this year and giving the airport a clearer claim on Northwest leisure traffic that might otherwise leak to Manchester or Manchester-area connecting options.
Sources: Ryanair Corporate; Ryanair Corporate (Manchester context)
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