Low-cost airline Ryanair has announced it will cut its flights from Stansted Airport by nine per cent over the next year in a row about landing fees.
This is a reversal on a planned increase of 5% from April.
Edited: 2:59 pm, March 02, 2013Ryanair fighting back, and fighting dirty, not sure if the increase is justified,but it shows the power airlines have.
Thanks LeicsLad.
Do you think that this is a serious proposal by Ryanair or just a threat to try to force Stanstead to rethink the landing fee percentage increase?
"Do you think that this is a serious proposal by Ryanair or just a threat to try to force Stanstead to rethink the landing fee percentage increase?"
or just a case of more free publicity for RA.
There is certainly posturing on both sides, but FR are serious. They have already decided which routes will be cut and it will be implemented by the end of the month. They only make these kinds of announcements when they are serious. We are not talking charging for loos or standing room here. It's only publicity-grabbing in the sense that they are trying to put pressure on the airport.
If Stansted management can't replace the income by convincing other carriers to fill the void they will have to negotiate with FR or accept the drop in revenue.
I think Tom might be near the mark and, in a way, you rather have to admire Ryanair for being able to engineer the media in this way to their perceived advantage.
The fact that Manchester Airport Group have bought Stansted probably has a lot to do with it. If Ryanair do reduce their fights out of Stansted perhaps other companies will fill the gap.
As I said, this isn't thay kind of engineering. They aren't floating some daft idea to get free publicity.
This is an announcement of a major change in strategy. Obviously they are putting their own spin on it but the fact remains that they will be operating 14% fewer flights from Stansted next month than they had planned to. The cuts are happening and even if the airport does a u-turn and gives FR what they want it will take a while to reverse them.
Edited: 4:21 pm, March 02, 2013This has been done by Ryanair before- and more than once. Some of the small European airports were happy to encourage Ryanair and improved their infrastructure to cope with the increased passenger volumes including public transfers airport-city centre..Only to be left high and dry when Ryanair pulled out.
Anyone know/have a list of which flights or routes are going to be affected?
I think Ryanair will do it. They used to fly from Cardiff but when the fees went up they moved the flights to Bristol where they now have a big base. Cardiff is now on the verge of closure (the welsh so called government are thinking of buying it) whilst Bristol now has over 5 times the number of passengers than Cardiff.
