Major airliner cuts flights to Germany amid taxes row

Ryanair has announced further significant cuts to its German winter schedule, blaming Berlin's failure to reduce location charges, which it claims are among the highest in Europe.

The Irish low-cost carrier's decision will lead to a loss of 800,000 seats and 24 routes across nine airports, including Berlin, Hamburg, and Memmingen, pushing its capacities below last winter's levels.

Airports in Dortmund, Dresden, and Leipzig will also remain closed, Ryanair added in a statement.

Ryanair's CMO, Dara Brady, described the cuts as "entirely avoidable," calling on Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder to "take urgent action to reform the ailing German aviation system."

The airline had previously warned the German government it would switch capacity to other EU countries if Berlin failed to meet its demands to reverse an aviation tax increase from May 2024 and reduce air traffic control charges.

Dara Brady said: “Germany’s air travel market is broken and needs an urgent fix.

“Due to its excessive access costs, Germany has only recovered 88 per cent of its pre-Covid traffic, which is by far the worst recovery of any major European market.

“Until the excessive (and rising) aviation tax, ATC charges, Security Fees and airport costs are addressed by the Government, German air traffic will simply continue to decline whilst other more competitive European countries (with no aviation taxes) benefit from turbocharged Ryanair traffic growth – at Germany’s expense.

“Ryanair once again calls on Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder to take urgent action to fix Germany’s broken air transport system by reducing its high access costs which, combined with Lufthansa’s high-fare monopoly, have forced German citizens and visitors to pay the highest airfares in Europe.

“Ryanair stands ready and willing to bring transformative growth to Germany and, subject to the Government finally taking action to reduce access costs, could deliver an additional 30 aircraft (+US$3bn investment), double traffic to 34m passengers p.a., and support the creation of over 1,000 additional jobs across Germany.”

The move comes as the low-cost airline Ryanair confirmed it will cut 1.2 million seats in its Spanish flight schedule next summer as the airline continues to battle regional airport fees.

The airline said it will also stop all flights to and from Asturias Airport in northern Spain.

Ryanair claims its decision comes as the Spanish airport group Aena “continues to raise its uncompetitive airport fees at Spanish (mostly empty) regional airports”.

This reduction in summer flight capacity to and from Spanish destinations, which is the equivalent to around 10 per cent fewer seats, follows Ryanair’s one million seat cuts to regional Spain for winter 2025.