Ryanair CEO warns of more flight cuts in Spain

Ryanair is considering cutting more flights from medium and small Spanish airports this winter and next year if AENA does not lower its fees.

“Regions need low fares to stimulate growth, and they need to be accompanied by low costs, otherwise the formula doesn’t work. We withdrew 800,000 seats this summer because we had better options to allocate that capacity elsewhere in Europe. 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 keep investing in loss-making operations. The rational decision is to move traffic to where access costs are falling, not rising, so we will continue to do this bit by bit. We have no plans to invest in regional airports because their pricing structure is broken,” CEO Eddie Wilson explained in an interview with El Economista.

Earlier this year, Ryanair announced that it will scale back flights in Spain by around 800,000 seats this summer claiming “excessive fees” from Spanish airports.

The Irish airline announced it planned to reduce its services in Spain by 18% after complaining about AENA’s charges and lack of growth incentives.

Ryanair claims that despite the Spanish government’s decision to freeze airport charges for five years during the Covid-19 pandemic, AENA attempted to increase charges every year.

At the same time, Ryanair increased its offer to destinations such as Madrid, Malaga and Alicante, adding 1.5 million more seats to those routes.

“Regional airports are 70% underutilised, so something is wrong. Either people don’t want to go to the regions, or the airlines don’t want to put planes there, but there is a problem, and Spain needs to solve it,” Wilson told El Economista.

“We are not asking for subsidies or special treatment for Ryanair, just a growth model that reduces the average cost and competitive airport charges for all airlines”, he added.

“We ask them that if we carry more passengers, to lower costs as passengers increase. Everyone wins, as the infrastructure is used, AENA recovers its investment, and Ryanair generates employment and pays taxes. But the message that the government is sending out is that Madrid, Barcelona, the Balearics and the Canaries should be managed well, and the rest of the population, who live outside of these areas, are being told that their airports are not going to be competitive,” Wilson pointed out.

Later in the interview, Wilson commented that AENA know how to operate airports and are good at it, but claims that the regions are going backwards, “We paid more than 600 million euros in 2024, and we increased traffic by 25% after Covid. It is the airlines that carry passengers, not the airports. Nobody wants an airport without passengers. They are important, but their function is the same as that of a road or a bridge: to serve the economy. And if they are not used, something is wrong.”

As a result, the Ryanair CEO has called for dialogue between all parties and for the government to “see how the regional model works in Italy, the United Kingdom, Ireland or Germany”. “The current minister (Óscar Puente) is going to witness a terminal decline of regional airports. I would be happy to sit down with him, but he has already made it clear that he does not want to and that he supports AENA, which has no plan and uses Ryanair as an excuse. I don’t expect them to accept everything we propose, but at least they could have responded. They didn’t. It’s very sad”, Wilson told El Economista.