By the time summer rolls around, Spain's most used airline will have 13 fewer routes, equal to a reduction of 18 percent of their total flights, or 800,000 passenger fewer seats overall.
As of January 22nd, Ryanair has not published on its website which routes exactly will be stopped, but we've done some digging around Spain's regional dailies to provide you with the full list.
Ryanair is set to stop operating all together in the birthplace of sherry, Jerez, in Andalusia, as well as in the northern city of Valladolid in Castilla y León. The Irish low cost carrier will also cut back on services to some of its other destinations in northern Spain, including Vigo (61 percent less) and Santiago de Compostela (-28 percent) in Galicia, Zaragoza in Aragón (- 20 percent), Santander in Cantabria (-5 percent) and Asturias (-11 percent).
Here is a full breakdown of the flight routes to and from Spain Ryanair will soon cancel based on The Local's research:
Vigo to Barcelona
Vigo to London Stansted
Santiago de Compostela to Milan
Santiago de Compostela to Bologna
Asturias to London Stansted
Santander to Alicante
Valladolid to Palma de Mallorca
Valladolid and Barcelona
Jerez to London Stansted
Jerez to Palma de Mallorca
Jerez to Barcelona
Zaragoza to Bologna
Zaragoza to Venice (Treviso)
Ryanair will also reduce the frequency of some of its ongoing flight routes from the Spanish airports named above (not cancel).
As you can see, all of the airports affected are smaller regional ones which don't fly to many destinations, so it will prove to be a blow for locals wanting to go on holiday overseas and foreign tourists looking to visit these areas.
Most of the airports with reduced or cancelled routes are in northern Spain - Santiago, Vigo, Asturias, Santander, Valladolid and Zaragoza - so affected passengers will either have to catch the train/bus or drive several hours to Madrid's Barajas or Barcelona' El Prat, or find out if other airlines operate the same routes Ryanair will soon cancel.
Regional governments such as Galicia's and city councils such as Valladolid's and Jerez's have already expressed their anger at Ryanair's decision to leave them high and dry, and are even considering legal action. For some of these smaller airports, Ryanair pulling out even threatens their capacity to continue operating.
For its part, Aena has responded to Ryanair by stating that its average airport charge of €10.35 per passenger is “one of the lowest in Europe”.
The state operator also suggested that passenger forecasts suggest Ryanair’s overall capacity in Spain will increase in 2025, despite the cutbacks in services at some of the smaller airports.
“Aena regrets that Ryanair uses spurious arguments that do not correspond to the reality of airport rates in Spain to confuse citizens and shamelessly put pressure on national and regional public institutions,” a statement from Aena said.
Ryanair issued a statement on Tuesday urging Aena to leave "the Madrid bubble" and ask Spanish regions what they need at their airports to grow and create jobs.
The previous day, Ryanair's CEO Eddie Wilson and Aena's head Maurici Lucena Betriu met to discuss possible solutions, but the Spanish airport operator representative said it was difficult not to interpret the low-cost carrier's decision as "outright blackmail" and that Aena cannot be tailored to Ryanair.
Wilson responded by arguing operated like a monopoly that "doesn't understand the deterioration of competitiveness of Spain's regional airports compared to their European counterparts".
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