Ryanair faces 'blackmail' protests over attempts to increase fees

AIRLINE TACTICS:A FRENCH POLITICIAN has accused Ryanair of "acting like pirates" over the company's attempt to increase the money it charges airports to fly to them.

Senator Michel Boutant said the airline’s attempts to raise Angoulême-Cognac Airport’s charges amounted to blackmail.

The airport, about 100km from Bordeaux, agreed to pay Ryanair a reported €225,000 in marketing fees this year in return for a service to London Stansted three times a week between April and September.

Boutant said Ryanair wrote to the airport authorities on December 7th to ask for an additional €175,000. It wanted a response within three days and threatened to discontinue the service, he added. The senator said they will refuse to pay on a point of principle, contrasting Ryanair’s profits of €387 million in the middle half of last year with the strained finances of French local authorities.

He has asked French regional airports not to give in to the airline’s demands, saying it was adept at playing the “competition card” by threatening to move its services elsewhere.

Senator Boutant leads the council in the department of Charente, where the airport is based, and which owns the airport with the local chamber of commerce and urban councils. Charente will have to pay 70 per cent of the Ryanair subsidy.

Last week the regional authority for Pau, in the French Pyrenees, also accused Ryanair of “financial blackmail” after the airline asked for a quadrupling of subsidies on the route, to €1.4 million, and threatened to move its services to Tarbes.

Ryanair’s European communications manager, Daniel de Carvalho, said there was no basis to the claims made by Pau or Senator Boutant. “We are always seeking to negotiate further discounts to all airports we fly to, in order to reduce fares,” he said. He pointed to a ruling in Ryanair’s favour this week when the European Commission closed its investigation into the airline’s relationship with Bratislava Airport, stating that it could make the airport more profitable. Ryanair also won a 2008 case to allow Charleroi Airport to pay the airline €4.5 million to establish a hub there.