The managing director of easyJet Portugal, the first low-cost airline to fly to the Azores, claims that the carrier will only return to the region if the game rules are the same for everyone.
“The Azores will always depend on the rules of the game being equal again for everyone,” said José Lopes, the general manager of easyJet Portugal, in an interview with Jornal de Negócios.
The representative of the low-cost airline didn’t name other carriers, but when asked if he was referring to the support given to Ryanair, he insisted on the need for equal rules.
“When there are no market distortions, we will certainly be interested in re-evaluating this market, which also has a lot of potential. Until then, we will continue to invest in Portugal, but with a greater focus on Porto, Lisbon, Faro, Funchal and Porto Santo. The latter is a pearl of our country that needs to be worked on and made known. It has potential for growth, even in winter,” he said.
In the same interview, José Lopes said that “flying to and from Portugal has never been better” financially.
“There have been many more campaigns than was normal pre-pandemic. I believe that in two to three years’ time, when the whole offer is consolidated, we’ll reach more normal prices, so to speak, in the market,” he said.
easyJet started flying to Ponta Delgada on March 29, 2015, but abandoned the route on October 28, 2017, after carrying around 182,000 passengers.


At the time, José Lopes claimed that the company had failed to enter the market “with the minimum quality offer.”
“We didn’t leave because traffic from Ponta Delgada was falling – it was growing – but, in our situation, we weren’t able to have the supply we wanted, which was at least two flights a day. As we didn’t have that capacity, I preferred to withdraw and turn those routes into daily routes [to other destinations],” he said in October 2017.
When it decided to “abandon the operation to the Azores”, easyJet operated four return flights a week to Ponta Delgada.
José Lopes said at the time that he didn’t believe that the departure would have “a negative impact on either the market or the Azoreans”.
Ryanair, the only low-cost airline that continues to operate flights between the mainland and the Azores, closed its base in Ponta Delgada this winter and reduced the number of flights in the low season.
In September 2023, when the company threatened to stop flying to the region, the Regional Secretary for Tourism, Berta Cabral, admitted to the Region’s Legislative Assembly that continuing the operation could cost the region close to 4.2 million euros over two years.
The regional secretary revealed that Ryanair would receive 1,155,000 euros per year to continue operating the domestic routes (to Lisbon and Porto), for a total of 2,310,000 over two years.
As for the international routes, between Ponta Delgada and Stansted (London) and Nuremberg, she said they would cost 630,000 euros in the first year, but the figure could rise to 1,255,000 in the second if the company doubled the number of weekly flights from one to two on each route.
Berta Cabral recalled, however, that between 2016 and 2022, when the PS governed, Ryanair’s operation cost 3 million euros a year, which included a sum of 1.5 million guaranteed by the Government of the Republic under the Plan for the Economic Revitalization of Terceira Island (PREIT).

in Diário Insular–José Lourenço, director

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Cultures Department (MCLL) as part of Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance)  at California State University, Fresno–PBBI thanks the sponsorship of the Luso-American Development Foundation from Lisbon, Portugal (FLAD