Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers is set to forfeit two landing slots at a Dutch airport after a rare move by the country’s airport authorities to punish the carrier’s repeated late arrivals.
Ryanair has operated Monday evening flights from the Bulgarian capital Sofia, and Thursday evening flights from Pisa in Italy, for two years, with both due in Eindhoven around 8 pm. But the Netherlands’ airport coordinator ACNL found the Irish airline’s flights from those destinations were behind schedule by an average of an hour on more than 30 occasions within a three-month period, causing a knock-on effect on departures later in the evening.
After a warning in June and failing to improve by August, the low-cost Irish carrier was accused of intentionally disobeying landing slot rules in a dispute that went to court. The spat recently ended in a judgment in favour of the ACNL. As a result, Ryanair will be stripped of the two Eindhoven slots in next summer’s schedule, meaning it will have to withdraw them from schedules or find a different time to operate.
It’s an outcome described by commentators as significant for the carrier because of the loss of preferential scheduling rights granted to a carrier that has historically held a slot and the likelihood that competitors like Wizz Air and Transavia are waiting in the wings to leap on scheduling windows.
The slapdown is also a turnaround for Ryanair, an airline more accustomed to threatening airports and national operators with withdrawing its flights than having them removed by force. The carrier is well-known for its relentless focus on overheads and desire to prioritise airports and destinations that allow it to protect its bottom line.
In October, it announced it would not renew flights to Tel Aviv because of a dispute over slot allocations and the use of Terminal 1. It has questioned Viennese routes due to what it calls “harmful” airport fees in Austria, and criticised Belgium for “reckless” levies there.
In July, in France, it cancelled all its routes to and from Bergerac, Brive, and Strasbourg, blaming “unviable” tax increases. It has cut 800,000 seats to Germany, and an ongoing battle with Spanish authorities over “excessive” charges there has seen it slash over a million summer seats and winter routes too – an opportunity leapt on by rivals who immediately announced double-digit boosts to their own capacity in Spain, which is now the world’s second most visited country.
