The domestic rate of APD, a tax levied on every ex-UK air seat sold, will be halved from £13 to £6.50 from Saturday (1 April).
Ryanair’s nine new routes include five from Belfast to Cardiff, Edinburgh, East Midlands, Manchester and Stansted. The other four are Bournemouth-Edinburgh, Edinburgh-Newquay, Edinburgh-Stansted and Newquay-Stansted.
The budget carrier, though, has called on the UK government to scrap APD altogether; the tax was introduced in the 1990s as a so-called "green tax" but has never been to put use for specific environmental or sustainability purposes, contributing instead to the general tax pool.
