Ryanair has threatened to cut even more flights to Spain amid escalating tensions with the country’s main airport operator. The budget airline has been waging a war across Europe in recent months in response to rising aviation fees it has to fork out.
Earlier this year, the Irish company slashed its summer 2025 traffic to Spain by a staggering 18 per cent, which saw the loss of 800,000 seats and 12 routes. It also boldly scrapped all flights to Aalborg after Denmark announced new taxes, and removed one of its Rome-based aircraft from Fiumicino – one of Italy’s largest airports.
Ryanair has consistently hit out at what it describes as ‘excessive airport charges’ – arguing that Spain is ‘limiting’ its growth and leaving ‘vast swathes of airports’ capacity underutilised’. However, Aena previously told the Mirror as of March 1, 2025, its aviation fees will remain frozen at €10.35 per passenger – which it says is ‘among the lowest in Europe’.
In a new interview with Spanish news site elEconomista, Ryanair’s CEO Eddie Wilson vowed to ramp up his actions against the country. He argued that regions ‘need low fares’ in order to stimulate growth – stating ‘otherwise, the formula doesn’t work’.
“We removed 800,000 seats [from Spain] this summer because we had better options to allocate that capacity elsewhere in Europe,'” he added. “And there will be more cuts in the winter of 2025, and even more in the summer of 2026, because it doesn’t make sense to continue investing in loss-making operations.”
Eddie stated the ‘rational decision’ is to move traffic to European destinations where access costs (that is, the price the airline has to pay for every passenger it carries to another country) are ‘falling, not rising’. “We have no plans to invest in regional airports because their pricing structure is broken,” he added.
The CEO did acknowledge that Aena is ‘good’ at operating airports – highlighting the saturated regions such as the Canary Islands, Madrid, and Barcelona. “They boast of having done a great job of recovering from the pandemic, but everything that happens is paid for by the airlines,” he added.
“It’s the airlines that carry passengers, not the airports. Nobody wants an airport without passengers. They’re important, but their function is the same as that of a road or a bridge: to serve the economy. And if they’re not used, something is wrong.”
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Aena’s president Maurici Lucena insisted the two organisations have a ‘good operational presence’, reportedly adding: “When Ryanair regains its presence, we will welcome them institutionally with open arms.
“Changing fares on a whim by Aena or due to spurious pressure from an airline would be a serious illegality. I don’t want to think about the expression on our Secretary General’s face if we proposed something different from what is established by the regulations.”
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