Portugal increasingly likely to be home to new Ryanair training centre

  • Lusa
  • 22 December 2022

"It is becoming increasingly likely that Portugal will be the winner, as it always is when the competitor is Spain," group chief executive Michael O'Leary told a virtual press conference.

Ryanair’s chief executive said on Wednesday it is “increasingly likely” that the company’s new training centre will be based in Portugal rather than Spain and pointed to a decision before the end of January.

“It is becoming increasingly likely that Portugal will be the winner, as it always is when the competitor is Spain,” group chief executive Michael O’Leary told a virtual press conference, joined by the airline’s chief executive Eddie Wilson.

The location for the airline’s new training centre has not yet been decided, but the official pointed out that it should be announced “before the end of January”.

In early September, Michael O’Leary said in a meeting with journalists in Dublin, Ireland, that Ryanair wants to open a new training centre for pilots and cabin crew in the Iberian Peninsula and admitted that Porto is one of the hypotheses under consideration.

However, at the end of October in Lisbon, Eddie Wilson said that the decision should be taken within three months and that Madrid was an option with better connections.

The official also said that the company was analysing the possibility of opening premises in Lisbon for the information technology team, which it plans to strengthen.

On the same occasion, the mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, said that the city wants to be in the running for the location of Ryanair’s new innovation centre.

“I will do everything I can for Ryanair to also establish itself here, another innovation centre in Lisbon, I think that is important, so we will try to be in this race,” Carlos Moedas told journalists on the sidelines of Ryanair’s 20th anniversary ceremony at Lisbon’s Escola de Hotelaria e Turismo, which was attended by several representatives of the sector.

The mayor stressed that competition for the location of the new centre is “between cities all over Europe” and argued that Lisbon “has to create that attractiveness”.