Ryanair (Dublin) in a protest over airport fees has announced it will cut its London Stansted hub by 9 percent. The airline has often used this threat to cut services and jobs to put pressure on airports to lower their fees. The opinionated airline issued this statement over the fee hikes:
Ryanair announced that it will cut its London Stansted traffic by 9% over the coming year (from 12.5 million to 11.4 million) after the Ferrovial/BAA Stansted monopoly announced a further unjustified increase of Stanstedโs already high charges of 6% from April 2013, despite the fact that Ferrovial/BAA has sold Stansted to Manchester Airport Group (MAG) who will take over the airport sometime before the end of March.
Ryanair has called on Stanstedโs regulator, the CAA, to investigate whether this unjustified and unwarranted 6% price hike was a โsweetenerโ by Ferrovial/BAAโs sale of Stansted, which raised ยฃ1.5 billion in proceeds for Ferrovial, despite the fact that Stanstedโs traffic has declined from 24 million per year ย to 17.5 million per year over the last 6 years.
Ryanair, which had planned to grow its Stansted traffic by 5% from April 2013, will now cut frequencies on 43 of its routes and reduce its weekly operations by over 170 flights, with the loss of 1.1 million passengers (-9%) and over 1,100 jobs at Stansted, ย in direct response to this unwarranted and unjustified 6% price hike.ย Ryanair called on the CAA regulator to explain why Ferrovial/BAA is allowed to hike charges by 6% when UK inflation is less than 3% and Stanstedโs traffic continues to decline.
Ryanair also called on Ferrovial/BAA to reverse this unjustified and unwarranted price increase before the sale to MAG is concluded and further called on MAG to confirm that it will not permit any further price increases at Stansted unless, or until, the traffic declines of the past 6 years (during which the Ferrovial/BAA monopoly has doubled Stanstedโs fees) are reversed.
Copyright Photo: SM Fitzwilliams Collection. Boeing 737-8AS EI-DCD (msn 33562) “Pride of Scotland” turns to depart from Dublin’s runway.
Ryanair:ย 
You must be logged in to post a comment.