Ryanair has used the announcement of its Winter 2025 schedule in Belgium as an opportunity to criticise Belgian aviation taxes and the European Commission, framing its new timetable as an intentional refusal to expand in response to airport fees and fiscal policy.
The so-called “low-cost” Irish carrier serves the vast majority (9.8 million) of its 11 million Belgian flyers through Brussels South Charleroi airport, a secondary airport situated over an hour (around 74 km) away from the capital. Despite the airline’s claim that it will freeze overall growth in Belgium, it is in fact adding three new routes to the 119 operated from Charleroi. The new services will fly to Katowice (Poland), Salerno (Italy), and Volos (Greece).
But due to what CEO Michael O’Leary calls “recklessly increased” airport charges among the highest in Europe at Belgium’s main airport at Brussels Zaventem, the airline says it will cut six per cent of flights there, taking 2024’s 12 winter routes down to 11. As well as slamming the airport, Ryanair also dislikes Belgium’s 150% increase in aviation taxes, which are up from €2 to €5 per traveller.
Belgium, the airline says, risks falling behind competitor European Union states like Albania, Italy, Hungary, and Sweden, in terms of its tourism and business travel sectors – a common claim which Ryanair has also levied at other authorities, for example, in France and Spain.
In addition to denouncing the Belgian airport operator and government, the budget airline renewed its castigation of the European Commission and its leader, Ursula von der Leyen, which it says should act to reform the bloc’s “broken” air traffic control (ATC) system.
Autumn 2024’s Draghi Report found inefficiencies costing over €6 billion in Europe’s ATC, and no remedy has yet been implemented, Ryanair points out. What’s more, repeated air traffic control strikes and system failures have cost airlines billions. In early July alone, around 600 flights and over 100,000 passengers were affected by French ATC strikes, which are particularly disruptive to European aviation due to the number of routes that overfly France, using its airspace. Ryanair argues that the Commission should put measures into place to protect such flights, demanding that mandatory ATC staffing should be implemented across the bloc.
Another reform O’Leary wants to see is an end to European passengers being unfairly charged more than non-Europeans, due to the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS), which does not align with CORSIA, a worldwide scheme.
