Spain’s airport operator has accused Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary of using it as a scapegoat to avoid incurring passengers’ wrath for the airline’s flight cancellations.
Airport operator Aena and Ryanair, Europe’s biggest airline, are locked in an escalating public row over what the carrier calls “excessive” fees, which it says have forced it to cut 2mn seats on flights to Spain and threaten another 1mn summer seat cuts next year.
In an interview with the Financial Times Maurici Lucena, chair and chief executive of Aena, hit out at O’Leary, accusing him of “lying continuously” and obscuring the true reason for the cuts.
“What really bothers me is that they’re not telling the truth,” Lucena said. “It has nothing to do with Aena’s fees. The reason they lie is that they don’t want to face the political and reputational cost of abandoning some regional airports, and in some cases even causing job losses when they shut down a base. That’s the real underlying issue.”
The Aena boss said Ryanair’s goal was to shift planes to routes outside Spain where it could make more money, including by charging higher ticket prices and securing taxpayer-funded support from governments.
“For [Ryanair], the business case includes everything: airport fees, the strength of demand, and public subsidies. Then, from that algorithm, they decide where to assign the planes,” said Lucena.
Lucena downplayed the significance of Aena’s proposed 6.5 per cent fee increase, which has sparked O’Leary’s outrage. The airport operator says it averages out at €0.68 per passenger, though it will vary by airport as some charge more than others in absolute terms.
Ryanair is the biggest airline in Spain by passenger numbers and the country is its second biggest market after Italy by revenue.
This week, O’Leary told the FT that regional costs were “too high”, and the airline was “better off flying at the same cost to places such as Palma [on the island of Mallorca] than flying to Jerez”.
Lucena suggested Ryanair was under pressure to move aircraft to maximise profitability because it is grappling with delays to the delivery of new Boeing planes, which have disrupted its ambitious expansion plans.
Ryanair was hit by the delays earlier this year, but now says it expects to receive most of the new planes this autumn and the remainder early in the new year — well ahead of bookings for next summer.
Ryanair says it will run no winter flights to some Spanish airports including Santiago de Compostela, where the airline accounted for 42 per cent of all passengers in the eight months to the end of August, according to Aena. At other airports where it plans to cut flights, including Vigo, Jerez and Tenerife, Ryanair has a smaller presence.
“When you cancel a route from an airport, especially if it’s a small airport, it doesn’t look good in the eyes of the public because people are used to being able to take that Ryanair flight,” Lucena said.
Due in part to rising traffic at bigger airports such as Málaga and Palma de Mallorca, Ryanair’s passenger numbers in Spain have grown this year, rising 5.1 per cent from a year ago to 47.2mn in the eight months to the end of August, Aena said.
Lucena, a former politician in Spain’s ruling Socialist party, said there was no chance of Aena closing any smaller airports, not least because it is required by law to keep them operating.
He added that other airlines were taking the slots abandoned by Ryanair, led by Vueling, Binter, EasyJet and Volotea. “The airlines will fill these gaps over the coming months, but it takes time.”
At the eleven airports affected by Ryanair’s cuts, planned seat numbers for the winter season across all airlines were down just 2.3 per cent from a year ago, Lucena said.
Ryanair has repeatedly clashed with European airport operators over fees — most recently in France, where it cancelled some flights — and the Aena boss lamented its “bullying” tactics. “I don’t understand why they treat us as vassals,” he said, noting that Aena’s €37bn market capitalisation was bigger than Ryanair’s €25bn.
“In Europe there is now a growing awareness that it is not necessarily a positive thing when Ryanair has a dominant share of an airport’s traffic and it starts exerting that political pressure.”
The Spanish airport most dependent on Ryanair is Vitoria in the Basque region, where the airline accounts for roughly 90 per cent of passengers and is planning small cuts.
Spain is “going to remain a key market for Ryanair”, Lucena predicted. “Who needs who more? I don’t know. But they need us a lot, absolutely. And they’ll keep on needing us if they want to serve their shareholders well in the coming years.”
A Ryanair spokesperson said: “If we are lying as Lucena claims, then why doesn’t he call our bluff and cut Aena’s high fees at Spain’s empty regional airports?”
They added: “Ryanair always goes where costs are lower and will happily go back to regional Spain when they stop charging Madrid/Barcelona prices. Until then it’s adiós Aena!”
