Budget airline Ryanair has threatened to cut further flights to Spain this winter season as its battle with Spain’s airport operator to lower fees at regional airports intensifies.
Ryanair’s outspoken CEO, Michael O’Leary, has again warned that he will cut capacity at small hubs for the coming winter season if the Spanish airport network operator, Aena, does not reduce the fees. This comes as Aena plans to undo a fee freeze and introduce the biggest increase in a decade.
“There will be significant cuts in Spain,” O'Leary said in a press conference in Dublin this week.
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The low-cost Irish airline has already cut 800,000 seats in Spain and cancelled 12 routes this summer for the same reason, ceasing entirely with operations at smaller airports like Jerez and Valladolid.
Routes have also been cut at regional airports such as Santiago de Compostela, Asturias, Cantabria, and Zaragoza. But Ryanair is not cutting its routes throughout the country: the airline added 1.5 million seats to larger and more popular airports such as Madrid, Málaga, and Alicante.
O’Leary did not specify the extent of the new cuts or which airports will be affected this winter, but he did stress that the cutbacks will be far-reaching and have an impact: “Some regional airports will close this winter,” the outspoken CEO threatened.
The warnings from Europe's leading budget airline coincides with Aena's new investment plan, which will start after the summer. It will outline a new fee structure for the 2027-2031 period and introduce a programme of investment worth billions of euros to expand Barcelona El Prat and Madrid’s Barajas airports, which will be financed primarily by the fees it charges airlines.
From 2026 the legal limit on fee hikes that Aena has followed in recent years will come to an end. Faced with this new scenario, airlines like Ryanair are already trying to ensure that these fees are as low as possible and protect their bottom lines.
O'Leary claims that Aena will “waste” billions of euros by “building facilities that airlines do not want or need as a way to increase fares.”
“We do need investment in Barcelona and Madrid,” he said, but not for "additional runways", suggesting the expansions are a way of justifying fee increases.
Aena has already put forward the proposals for a tariff review in 2026 that would mark a turning point in its pricing policy: the airport operator is proposing a 6.5 percent increase in the fees it charges airlines, the largest since legislation came into force in 2015, which froze tariffs and limited the operator's ability to charge airlines.
The hike would translate into an average increase of 68 cents per passenger, bringing the Adjusted Maximum Revenue per Passenger (IMAAJ) up to €11.03 from the current €10.35.
Ryanair carried 200 million passengers across Europe last year, according to figures from AeroTime.
READ ALSO: Ryanair warns it may cut even more flights to Spain's smaller airports
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