Ryanair to impose 70c levy to pay for wheelchairs

Ryanair will impose a levy of 70 cent on every passenger to meet the cost of providing wheelchairs at four airports.

The move could raise up to €16 million to provide wheelchair access to its flights to and from Dublin, Shannon, Stansted and Gatwick airports.

These are the only airports Ryanair flies from where the airport operator does not absorb the cost of providing wheelchair access. Ryanair introduced the charge after it lost a case taken by a disabled man forced to pay to use a wheelchair at Stansted Airport.

A spokeswoman for the airline said the charge would be introduced "immediately".

Mr Bob Ross (54), from Islington, north London, won his landmark case against Ryanair today after successfully claiming the £18 sterling fee he was charged for using a wheelchair was discriminatory.

Judge Crawford Lindsay QC, sitting in the Central London County Court, ruled Ryanair acted unlawfully by not ensuring that a wheelchair was provided free of charge for Mr Ross to use at Stansted Airport.

The court awarded Mr Ross £1,336 in compensation. Saying it would contest the verdict the airline also said it would impose a levy of 70 cents in the euro area and 50 pence in Britain to cover the cost of providing wheelchairs at the four airports.

The airline was unable to provide a breakdown of what proportion of passengers required assistance at these four airports. The company carried more than six million passengers in the three months to December 31st 2003. If this rate of passenger travel is maintained, over a 12 month period up to 24 million passengers would travel with Ryanair resulting in up to €16.8 million being raised from the levy.

The airline confirmed that the new levy would be "stripped out" of the flight cost and would appear on booking forms as an extra charge. Following the result outside the court Mr Ross, who has suffered from cerebral palsy since birth that makes it difficult for him to walk, said he was delighted by the court decision.

Mr Ross, who also has asthma, said: "What I want to see now is for the policy to be changed and the charges dropped. "I hope that Ryanair will see that it's wrong to charge disabled passengers for the use of wheelchairs and get rid of the charges," Mr Ross said.