Pay your way, airport boss tells Ryanair

THE boss of Edinburgh Airport said Ryanair has “to pay its way” as he hit back in the row with the budget airline over its plans to axe eight routes from the Scottish capital.

Jim O’Sullivan said he would not have the no-frills airline “flying here for free” as he dismissed suggestions from the Dublin-based firm that Edinburgh airport had failed to offer a competitive deal.

The attack on Ryanair came after the airline’s deputy chief executive, Michael Cawley, flew into Edinburgh yesterday to announce “devastating reductions” to the carrier’s winter routes, with the scrapping of the destinations of Bratislava, Bremen, Frankfurt, Fuerteventura, Gothenburg, Kaunas, Lodz and Poznan.

Mr Cawley issued a stark warning about “substantial further reductions” to Ryanair’s Edinburgh operations which he said would be “much smaller” unless airport bosses handed the Irish carrier a better deal.

However, Mr O’Sullivan insisted that he was “not in a position to negotiate” an extension to Ryanair’s five-year base agreement, which expires in October 2012, due to the British Airports Authority (BAA) seeking a buyer for Edinburgh Airport.

He also dismissed claims by Ryanair that 200 jobs had been shed during a previous round of cutbacks by the airline this year that saw the firm end its flight routes to Berlin, as well as scrapping plans for services to Malmo in Sweden, Murcia and Ibiza in Spain, and Tallinn in Estonia.

Mr O’Sullivan said: “We’re not in a position to negotiate because of the sale process, but in the long term, we’re confident we’ll be able to go to them with a proposition. We can’t have them flying here for free and they’ve got to pay their way. We have 40 airlines and have to be fair and we can’t have 39 airlines subsidising the other.”

He went on to deny suggestions by Ryanair that the airport was “uncompetitive” and said that the other 39 carriers operating out of the Scottish capital airport, which attracted more than nine million air passengers a year, had not backed the claim.

However, Mr Cawley claimed that the Edinburgh Airport was “horribly uncompetitive” as he warned Ryanair would review its Edinburgh operation further unless it received a “low-cost offer”.

He also said that the cuts to the destinations, which Ryanair says will lead to passenger numbers dropping from 1.8 million to 1.5 million, could be reversed if BAA made an improved offer.

Mr Cawley said: “These are devastating reductions. We’ve been here since 2001, but we’ve got to see what happens in the next year. If it becomes more uncompetitive then we’ll have to review the situation.

“Edinburgh currently is four times more uncompetitive than some airports we fly out of down south and although we wouldn’t pull out, there could be substantial further reductions if it continues to be uncompetitive.

“We’ll have to see if this level of activity can continue because if it was to be increasingly uncompetitive then we could decide to be much smaller than we are now at Edinburgh Airport.

“But we could see a reversal of the cuts if a new low-cost offer was made.”

Transport minister Keith Brown said Ryanair’s announcement was “disappointing”.

He added: “While there are obvious differences, we note that there remains a willingness from the airport and the airline to continue discussions. And I would encourage both to seek a solution which is good for them and is good for passengers.”