Ryanair announced on Tuesday that it is planning to launch new routes from London Stansted to Lodz and Poznan in Poland, between late September and the end of October.
Ryanair began flying to Wroclaw in Poland for the first time in April 2005, but with Tuesday's move it has now announced the launch of a total of seven routes to Poland (other destinations include Szczecin, Gdansk, Bydgoszcz and Rzeszow) - which means that it now serves more Polish airports from London than any other airline.
Cheap air travel means that the low cost airlines are able to attract a growing number of passengers from East Europe, who in the past had used bus and coach services to reach London.
Ryanair's chief rivals, EasyJet, were the first of the west European low-cost airlines to head into east Europe following EU enlargement. They already fly to Prague, Budapest, Ljubljana, Warsaw, Krakow and Bratislava, and have recently added Tallinn (from London Stansted and Berlin) and Riga (from Berlin) to their list of destinations.
These expansions by Ryanair and EasyJet will put increased pressure on those low cost airlines formed in the last couple of years in central Europe, specifically SkyEurope and WizzAir, which have both seen the Polish market with its big population as an important source of future growth.
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