Irish company Ryanair announced that it will open a new twice-weekly service from Milan Bergano to Plovdiv in Bulgaria which will commence on 7 May.

The flights will be serviced on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

The company recently dropped plans for a line from the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv to Barcelona, Spain, which was supposed to be launched on March 27. Tickets for the flights were on sale since December 2010. The flights to Milan Bergano is the alternative destination the company offers to its clients.

The reason for the preliminary annulments of the new line is the termination of the five-year contract between Ryanair and the Barcelona Girona Airport.

The new Catalonian government has not approved the agreement between the carrier and the airport, which was announced at the end of 2010.

As a result, Ryanair annulled its flights from the Girona Airport to 18 destinations, including Plovdiv, London, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Ibiza, Madrid, Oslo.

Currently, Ryanair performs flights from Plovdiv Airport to Stansted Airport in London twice a week - on Tuesday and on Saturday. One-way fares start from GBP 32.99 including taxes. The flights provide easy access for Britons to the ski slopes of Bansko and Pamporovo.

Ryanair said in 2010 that it may increase the number of flights to Plovdiv in the near future and will also consider the opening of lines from Bulgaria to Spain and Italy, where there are large numbers of Bulgarian immigrants.

Plovdiv became even more attractive for air companies as of April 1, 2010, when its fees were sharply reduced and now stand three times lower that the fees at the airport in the capital Sofia. The low fees will be in force for two years.

Bulgaria, which attracted a number of low-cost carriers thanks to its accession to the European Union and fast economic growth in the years right after its entry, is expected to continue to see the expansion of their market share.