Airport costs put off Ryanair
14.03.09
Ryanair has said that it wants to set up a base at Aberdeen Airport – but soaring costs and air travel taxes are forcing it to look at mainland Europe instead. The budget airline, which carries over 50million passengers a year, says it is considering setting up low-cost routes from Aberdeen to Paris, Barcelona and Frankfurt, potentially bringing more than 100 jobs to the north-east.
But the airline dismissed Aberdeen as ‘unattractive’, saying that the BAA-owned airport was ‘expensive’ and that air taxes being levied by the Government were having a huge impact on regional airports.
Ryanair currently has one route from Aberdeen - to Dublin - which has flown 4 days a week since it was introduced in 2002. It carried over 70,000 passengers through Aberdeen Airport last year, but this was a fall of more than 5000 on the previous year. At a press conference in Aberdeen yesterday, the airline said this decline could be reversed with the scrapping of air passenger duty and the introduction of a low-cost deal at Aberdeen Airport.
A spokeswoman for BAA said: ‘The tax issue is one for the government. Regarding future Ryanair routes, the talks which have been held have been positive.' As regular readers will know, Ryanair often uses these 'press conferences' as a negotiating technique in order to try to put pressure on the airport to get a better deal.
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg it | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit
To book aberdeen airport hotel or parking aberdeen airport at the lowest price, click on these links to two great aberdeen airport car parking and aberdeen airport hotel price comparison websites.
