Valencia Airport Spain - Who will service this airport with flights to/from the UK? Ryanair and/or Clickair?

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Ryanair

For some weeks now the British residents who visit Valencia or live here and use Ryanair have been watching with baited breath to see what will happen to the seemingly brinkmanship positions of Ryanair and the Valenciana Government, who are responsible for our local Valencian airport at Manises, Valencia.

It is reported that Ryanair issued an ultimatum that their deadline for a meeting was 17th October and that unless a meeting took place then and that they were also given a cash injection from the Valencian Government of €1milliion, that they would close all 22 routes into/out of Valencia.

It seems that the Valencian Government were not going to be bullied by Ryanair!    The meeting didn't take place, there were no cash handouts and so Ryanair are now pulling out immediately and making arrangement to refund any flights booked for the future.

Ryanair said it required cash handouts to promote Valencia across Europe to the destinations served from Valencia.  Ryanair claimed that this promotion would increase visitors to Valencia.

Ryanair alleged that whilst the Generalitat were handing out €11 million to local airline "Nostrum" it was telling Ryanair that there was absolutely no funding available!

There has obviously been several heated debates over the whole thing for the last few weeks, now culminating in the problems caused with people having to rebook all their flights.

It is also said that there will be huge job losses due to Ryanair pulling out.  I would have thought that any airline filling the slot vacated by Ryanair would need to hire these people?

Clickair

Now we are hearing that Clickair, the Spanish budget airline has confirmed interest in taking over routes and landing slots currently operated by Irish low cost carrier Ryanair at Valencia's Manises airport.

It seems that Clickair considers that Valencia is stragegically important for its expansion plans .   It is said that Clickair is  ready to negociate for all the landing slots currently held by Ryanair.   

They have stated that they will consider all the routes currently operated by Ryanair and take on those that fir their own business plans.