Ryanair’s chief executive said he was prepared to cut an additional one million seats from flights to Spain next summer in the airline’s escalating row with the country’s airports operator over passenger taxes.
The Irish carrier has already cancelled up to two million seats over this coming winter and the summer just passed, over a refusal to pay a 6.5 per cent increase in charges to state-owned Spanish operator Aena.
“I am due back in Madrid in two weeks, I will probably announce another one million seats coming out next summer,” Michael O’Leary told the Financial Times after the airline’s annual meeting on Thursday.
“If the costs in regional Spain are too high, I will fly elsewhere. We are better off flying at the same cost to places such as Palma [on the island of Mallorca] than flying to Jerez.”
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Ryanair has called on Aena to cancel the cost increases.
“If the Spanish government can’t persuade Aena [to back down], then I’ve no desire to serve them anyway,” Mr O’Leary added. Last week, the carrier said it would run no winter flights to Spanish airports including Santiago de Compostela, Vigo, Valladolid, Jerez and Tenerife in the Canary Islands.
Ryanair’s row with Aena is the latest spat between the airline and a leading European airport operator over fees. Mr O’Leary said the airline, which also clashed with French authorities this year, took a “whack-a-mole” approach to airport operator disputes, rather than a “Napoleonic strategy” of lining up future targets.
Aena, which says its increase amounts to €0.68 per passenger, has accused Ryanair of “extortion” and dishonesty, saying the airline had formally applied to operate a higher number of flights that did not match its claims to be cancelling routes.
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Aena chairman Maurici Lucena last week branded Ryanair “impertinent”, saying the airline harboured a “disturbingly plutocratic” vision of politics in which “government decision-making should bend to the interests of the most economically powerful companies”.
There is no sign of Spain’s leftwing government rallying to Ryanair’s side. Mr Lucena is a former politician from the ruling Socialist party and Óscar Puente, Spain’s transport minister, backed Aena last week by accusing Ryanair of “blackmail”. The Spanish state has a 51 per cent stake in the airport operator, which also owns the UK’s Luton airport.
Ryanair currently transports more passengers to and from Spain than any other airline, including the country’s flagship carrier Iberia.
Mr O’Leary said Aena had a “monopoly approach to pricing” where “everyone pays the same fees in Barcelona as in mickey mouse airports”, and that the result was that “all these regional airports are empty”.
“It is mad you have a country the size of Spain with one big monopoly” operator, he added. He claimed the row, which has generated significant publicity, had actually helped increase Ryanair’s bookings, which are “up 8 per cent in a week”.
Of the one million seats taken out of regional airports, he said “around half a million have already been redirected to Málaga and Palma, while others have gone to regional Italian destinations”. Spain is the second-largest market for Ryanair after Italy, accounting for 18 per cent of its revenues during the 2025 financial year to March 31st.
The carrier was hit earlier this year by delays to the delivery of new planes from Boeing, but now expects to take delivery of 25 of the aircraft this year, and an additional four early in the new year. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
