Ryanair’s disagreement with Spain’s airport operator has reached new heights, with the low-cost service’s CEO threatening to chop additional flights to Spain’s smaller regional airports as Aena confirmed its greatest improve in airport charges in a decade.
Funds airline Ryanair has threatened to chop additional flights to Spain this winter season as its battle with Spain’s airport operator to decrease charges at regional airports intensifies.
Ryanair’s outspoken CEO, Michael O’Leary, has once more warned that he’ll minimize capability at small hubs for the approaching winter season if the Spanish airport community operator, Aena, doesn’t cut back the charges. This comes as Aena plans to undo a charge freeze and introduce the largest improve in a decade.
“There will likely be vital cuts in Spain,” O’Leary stated in a press convention in Dublin this week.
READ ALSO: REVEALED – The flight routes to Spain Ryanair will soon cancel
The low-cost Irish airline has already minimize 800,000 seats in Spain and cancelled 12 routes this summer time for a similar purpose, ceasing completely with operations at smaller airports like Jerez and Valladolid.
Routes have additionally been minimize at regional airports resembling Santiago de Compostela, Asturias, Cantabria, and Zaragoza. However Ryanair is just not reducing its routes all through the nation: the airline added 1.5 million seats to bigger and extra well-liked airports resembling Madrid, Málaga, and Alicante.
O’Leary didn’t specify the extent of the brand new cuts or which airports will likely be affected this winter, however he did stress that the cutbacks will likely be far-reaching and have an effect: “Some regional airports will shut this winter,” the outspoken CEO threatened.
The warnings from Europe’s main funds airline coincides with Aena’s new funding plan, which is able to begin after the summer time. It’s going to define a brand new charge construction for the 2027-2031 interval and introduce a programme of funding price billions of euros to broaden Barcelona El Prat and Madrid’s Barajas airports, which will likely be financed primarily by the charges it expenses airways.
From 2026 the authorized restrict on charge hikes that Aena has adopted lately will come to an finish. Confronted with this new state of affairs, airways like Ryanair are already attempting to make sure that these charges are as little as attainable and defend their backside traces.
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O’Leary claims that Aena will “waste” billions of euros by “constructing services that airways don’t want or want as a strategy to improve fares.”
“We do want funding in Barcelona and Madrid,” he stated, however not for “extra runways”, suggesting the expansions are a method of justifying charge will increase.
Aena has already put ahead the proposals for a tariff assessment in 2026 that might mark a turning level in its pricing coverage: the airport operator is proposing a 6.5 p.c improve within the charges it expenses airways, the most important since laws got here into drive in 2015, which froze tariffs and restricted the operator’s skill to cost airways.
The hike would translate into a mean improve of 68 cents per passenger, bringing the Adjusted Most Income per Passenger (IMAAJ) as much as €11.03 from the present €10.35.
Ryanair carried 200 million passengers throughout Europe final yr, according to figures from AeroTime.
READ ALSO: Ryanair warns it may cut even more flights to Spain’s smaller airports
