Over the years, we’ve become accustomed to Ryanair’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, making headlines with his outspoken remarks and willingness to publicly criticize lawmakers whom he thinks are getting in the way of his airline’s growth.
Now, the Spanish airport operator Aena is caught in Ryanair’s crosshairs over a proposed hike in landing fees, with the airline threatening to slash capacity to regional Spain by 41% this winter due to what it describes as the “excessive and uncompetitive” fees.
The dispute in a nutshell
The Spanish company Aena is the official operator of all of Spain’s airports. It raises money through a variety of activities, including charging airlines landing and airport use fees. For 2026, Aena has decided to raise these fees by 6.62%.
The fee increase will apply to all airports across Spain, even regional airports with low passenger traffic.
Ryanair says this ‘excessive’ fee increase makes regional Spanish airports uncompetitive, and, as a result, it can no longer justify its investment in these airports.
Europe’s largest budget airline will, therefore, slash flights to regional Spanish airports, which could result in a “tourist catastrophe.”
Aena argues that Ryanair is trying to influence public opinion and win discounts at the expense of Spanish taxpayers.
Ryanair says it could pull two million seats per year from sale, closing a base in Santiago, grounding all flights to Vigo and Tenerife Norte, and slashing capacity to a slew of other destinations, including Zaragoza, Santander, and Asturias.
Rather than increasing landing fees by 6.62% next year, Ryanair says Aena and the Spanish government (which is a major shareholder in the airport operator) should be reducing its charges just like other countries like Italy, Morocco and Croatia have done in recent years.
Effectively, Ryanair is calling for a discount to continue to operate flights to Spani’s regional airports.
While Ryanair says the discounts are necessary to keep Spain competitive, Lucena sees the situation very differently.
In 2023, regional airport fees amounted to approximately €2 per passenger, while the average cost across all of Aena’s airports was €10.35 per passenger. In other words, flying to regional airports is already cheaper than flying to main hubs, Aena argues.
“It is difficult to find in contemporary business history another case like that of Ryanair in which the disagreement between the operational excellence of a company and the dishonesty of its communication policy is so amazing,” Lucena blasted in a statement published on Wednesday.
“The insolence and disinhibition of Ryanair’s public demands on democratic governments in the countries in which it operates with its aircraft, to obtain economic advantages, reveal two deeply rooted and unedifying characteristics of this airline,” Lucena continued.
“The first is that Ryanair has a disturbing plutocratic conception of the political system, that is, it frightens public opinion with the withdrawal of its planes, demands the resignation of ministers from half of Europe and the president of the European Commission, mocks democratically elected politicians and asks for the change of laws in their favor because it considers that government decision-making must bend to the interests of companies with greater economic power, such as Ryanair, instead of protecting the ‘general interest’.”
“The second characteristic is a policy of communication and institutional relations of Ryanair in permanent and deliberate collision with objective facts and veracity.”
Aena has compiled a 66-page dossier detailing what it describes as Ryanair’s attempts to ‘threaten and intimidate’ governments in several countries, including Germany, France, and Portugal, as well as Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom – all within the last 20 months.
Lucena points out that the price hike it’s proposed price hike in landing fees will cost airlines €0.68 per passenger. In contrast, Lucena alleges that Ryanair’s ticket prices have gone up by an average of 21% in the last year.
“Everyone knows that a citizen’s decision to take a plane does not depend on the plane ticket costing 68 euro cents more next year, but Ryanair insists again and again on the opposite without blushing,” Lucena slammed.
“It is not true that Ryanair is genuinely concerned about the well-being of Spanish citizens and the competitiveness of the regions. What Ryanair wants is, simply, to earn more money, even if it is paid for by the pocket of Spanish taxpayers,” the statement continued.
Ryanair sees the situation very differently and says it would rather move its aircraft on routes to other airports outside of Spain that “wish to develop traffic” – presumably by offering discounted airport usage fees.
Of course, airlines winning discounts and subsidies to serve specific destinations isn’t anything new, nor is it illegal or necessarily immoral. There are some routes that, on paper, don’t make any sense from a financial viewpoint – that is, until you factor in the subsidies that airlines are being paid to operate these routes.
Ryanair has every right to move its aircraft to alternative markets, even if it might just be on the hunt for subsidies, but Lucena suggests that the airline’s ulterior motive is to secure discounts at Spanish airports.
“If Spanish airports were to evolve in line with Ryanair’s demands, whining, deception, and unbearable extortion strategy, in the medium and long term, airports would cease to function properly,” Lucena warns.
“It is a pity, in short, that Ryanair’s communication and institutional relations policy is guided by hypocrisy, rudeness and blackmail.”
