Spain accuses Ryanair of “blackmail”

The CEO of Ryanair, Eddie Wilson, and the president of Aena, participated this Monday in a round table at the Hotusa Explora Forum, where Lucena said that the Spanish airport system “cannot be made to measure for Ryanair” and that “it is very difficult not to interpret the airline’s communiqués of last week as blackmail in every sense of the word”.

Ryanair considers that this accusation “would be ridiculous if it were not so serious for Spanish regional economies” and alleges that these “defensive and unfounded comments by Aena expose the mentality of a monopolistic operator that does not understand the deterioration of the competitiveness of Spanish airports compared to other regional airports in Europe”.

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The airline has also confirmed that on 17 January it submitted a detailed written plan to Transport Minister Óscar Puente to grow 14 regional airports by up to three million passengers and, in addition, another plan had been sent on 19 September. Aena, it says, “ignored Ryanair’s growth proposals” and introduced an incentive plan that, in the airline’s view, “was nothing more than a public relations stunt”.

Ryanair now considers that Puente has “two options”. On the one hand, “continue to support Aena’s failed regional airport policy’ or ‘demand a growth plan from Aena to attract airlines”. If Aena “fails to make regional airports grow”, Ryanair believes that “it should be forced to divest itself of the regional airports that are currently suffering the consequences of its inaction”.

In light of this, the airline has detailed that it remains available to meet with the minister and Aena to seek a solution to fix Spain’s regional connectivity and growth. In addition, it will visit Spanish regional governments in the coming weeks to share Ryanair’s growth plan already presented to the government, visits to which Wilson invited Lucena to participate.

Aena explained that its airports have the “most competitive” charges in Europe and that, with the incentives, the smallest airports have charges of around 2 euros per passenger. “If the airports did not work well, it would be impossible to have managed these 309 million passengers last year”, the Aena boss stressed, summarising his speech by saying that the Spanish airport system “has to be balanced” and “attend to a heterogeneity of business models, so it could not only serve the legitimate, but very particular and also - in his opinion - short-term interest” of Ryanair.