D.he Irish low-cost airline Ryanair will close its base at Frankfurt Airport on March 31 of this year, the new airline boss Eddie Wilson confirmed to the FAZ on Friday. The low-cost airline only came to Frankfurt in 2017. Until then, Ryanair had only offered Hahn Airport in Hunsrück as a departure point for passengers from the Rhine-Main area.
The five Irish aircraft at Germany’s largest airport are to be distributed to other airports. Ryanair cites excessive airport charges as the reason. The Frankfurt airport operator had just raised this by 4.3 percent.
In an initial statement, a spokesman for the Frankfurt airport operator Fraport regretted the decision. The reason is, however, not plausible from the Frankfurt point of view. The new fee schedule, which incidentally always has to be approved by the Hessian Ministry of Economics and Transport, is an increase that is “extremely moderate” in a European comparison with airports of a similar size. In fact, at the end of 2021, London Heathrow Airport received approval from the British Civil Aviation Authority to raise airport charges by around 50 percent.
“Non-discriminatory traffic recovery programs”
At Ryanair, however, it was said on Friday that other airports with lower charges were promoting the recovery of air traffic after the burglary caused by the corona pandemic. Unfortunately, Frankfurt decided to increase prices even further, which means that Germany’s largest airport is no longer competitive compared to European airports.
Ryanair still wants to continue investing in Germany, in the three-digit million range, it said. For example, two planes will be stationed at Nuremberg Airport. The Irish are once again accusing the German government of protecting “established airlines like Lufthansa” with billions in aid instead of introducing “non-discriminatory traffic recovery programs” from which all airlines could benefit.
According to the information, the crews stationed in Frankfurt, including the pilots, have already received notification of the closure of the base at the end of March 2022. However, all crew members would have the opportunity to get an alternative job within the Ryanair network, especially since Ryanair had announced the delivery of 210 new aircraft in order to be able to grow faster than others after the corona pandemic.
Ryanair also wants to provide a new growth spurt in Europe this summer with 65 new Boeing B737-8200s. There are also many other airports across Europe that want to grow with Ryanair. But Frankfurt decided to “drive away traffic and jobs by increasing airport charges” instead of giving the Irish airline an incentive to stay and grow.
Ryanair started operations in Frankfurt in 2017 after the airport operator Fraport AG had launched an incentive program in the 2017 fee schedule, which provided for fee advantages for airlines starting in Frankfurt and also established it for airlines that were already serving new connections. These perks, with which Frankfurt wanted to increase the number of connections and thus competitiveness, have, as planned, melted away from year to year.
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