Ryanair’s CEO has warned that
the low-cost service may minimize much more flights to Spain’s smaller regional airports after already axing 800,000 seats this 12 months, with the continued charges dispute with Spanish airport operator Aena given as the explanation.
Europe’s largest price range airline Ryanair says it’s contemplating reducing extra flights from small and medium-sized airports in Spain this winter and in 2026 if Spanish airport operator Aena doesn’t scale back its charges.
In a dialog with elEconomista.es, the airline’s CEO, Eddie Wilson, warned: “Areas want low fares to stimulate progress, and so they have to be accompanied by low prices, as a result of in any other case the system does not work…. It does not make sense to proceed investing in loss-making operations.
“The rational choice is to maneuver site visitors to the place entry prices are falling, not rising, so we’ll proceed to take action progressively. Now we have no plans to put money into regional airports as a result of their pricing construction is damaged”.
In January, Ryanair had already introduced it might scale back flights at seven regional airports in Spain through the summer time, cancelling roughly 800,000 seats in comparison with the earlier 12 months.
Wilson has criticised the shortage of response from the airport operator and the federal government since their warnings started. “They are not all in favour of speaking. We have been coping with this difficulty for years, and all they have been saying are incentive plans that do not work,” he defined.
The Irish airline states that it’s not asking for subsidies, however slightly a framework that enables for decreasing common prices per passenger. “If we supply extra travellers, prices ought to go down. Everybody wins: Aena recovers its funding, we create jobs, and the infrastructure is used,” Wilson mentioned.
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This new warning from Ryanair reinforces the stress it has put the Spanish authorities and Aena beneath for the reason that starting of the 12 months, when it introduced the closure of its bases in Jerez and Valladolid, and route cuts at airports akin to Santiago de Compostela, Asturias, Cantabria, and Zaragoza. In line with Wilson regional airports are 70 p.c underutilised.
However Ryanair isn’t reducing its routes all through the nation. Quite the opposite, the airline added 1.5 million seats to bigger and extra widespread airports akin to Madrid, Málaga, and Alicante.
On the identical time, the corporate is looking for extra predictability to make sure medium- and long-term operations at smaller airports. “What we’re asking them is to share among the danger with us. We do not need low charges eternally, but when they offer us a reduction for 3 or 4 years on sure routes, we’ll present them it really works, after which they’ll increase them,” Wilson added.
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That is unhealthy information for Spain and its residents, partly as a result of many areas have been preventing overtourism, which fuelled dozens of anti-tourism protests final 12 months, and however the much less populated and fewer ‘widespread’ elements of the nation are already combating journey hyperlinks.
If Ryanair have been to dwell as much as its phrase because it already has performed this 12 months, such a choice to slash extra routes to smaller airports will solely contribute additional to what Wilson known as their “continual decay”.
The Spanish authorities and Spanish Tourism Board are attempting to create extra sustainable tourism fashions, which embody “equitable distribution of advantages and burdens” and are attempting to advertise areas and areas, which obtain fewer vacationers.
This implies selling smaller areas within the northern, central and western areas of the nation to be able to unfold guests out, however with fewer connections to those areas, that is going to be a lot tougher.
The truth that Ryanair feels it’s being allegedly pressured to chop its routes to those smaller, lesser-visited areas and is growing them to already over-saturated areas is barely going to gas the difficulty of mass tourism in Spain.