Ryanair, which termed itself Dublin Airport’s largest airline, today confirmed that it will further reduce its flights and traffic at Dublin Airport this summer by up to 20% as high and rising DAA (Dublin Airport Authority)  airport charges and the public €10 travel tax continue to devastate Irish traffic and tourism. These cuts come one week after BMI announced the closure of its Dublin base and cuts in its Dublin-Heathrow flights from 7 to 4 this summer. The DAA rejected the airline's fraudulent claims and said it seems odd that an airline that regularly charges passengers €10 each for the privilege of paying for a return flight by credit card should argue that this change will cause a seismic shift in travel patterns. Ryanair’s baggage check-in charge has increased by 600% since 2006 and credit card charges have risen 300%.

Ryanair said the DAA’s high costs, and the €10 travel tax have caused Dublin Airport’s traffic to collapse by 3m passengers in 2009 (during a year when Ryanair grew elsewhere by 8m passengers). Already this winter, Dublin Airport has suffered the loss of British Airways, Malev and Budget Travel in addition to BMI’s Heathrow cutbacks.

Ryanair's claims regarding the impact of the €10 travel tax, could have some credibility if it acknowledged that the severest recession in decades is likely to have had an impact on travel numbers. It is a joke to claim the fall in traffic numbers is mainly due to the equivalent cost of 2 pints of Guinness!

Ryanair says it regrets the Government’s response to the tourism collapse which was to order the Aviation Regulator to approve up to 40% increases in the DAA’s already high fees from 2010 onwards, "to help the near bankrupt DAA pay for its unneeded and over specified €1.2bn T2, which has cost 6 times more than the €200m originally promised by the DAA."

Ryanair expects total traffic at Dublin Airport to fall from 20m to 18m in 2010, as it announced up to 20% cuts in its Dublin operations for summer 2010 including:

• A 17% cut in Dublin based summer fleet (from 18 in 2009 to 15 aircraft in 2010).
• A 19% cut in weekly rotations (from over 600 to less than 500).
• A 20% cut in Ryanair’s Dublin traffic from 8.7m to approx 6.5m in the year to March 2011.
• The loss of 150 Ryr jobs (pilots, crew & engineers) and over 2,000 support jobs at Dublin.

Further cuts in Ryanair’s Dublin winter schedule will be announced later.

Ryanair said Ireland in general, and Dublin Airport in particular, are now high cost destinations, compared to other European cities where airports are lowering costs and Govt’s are scrapping tourist taxes. Ryanair’s operations at Dublin airport will focus on higher yield, outbound, peak month, summer sun routes, rather than stimulating year round inbound tourism with low access fares. Ryanair today announced a range of extra holiday flights from Dublin for the 3 peak summer months of June, July and August 2010 to Alicante, Canary Islands, Faro and Malaga for Irish people who simply want to get away for a sun holiday. These additional peak summer flights will take up much of the summer sun capacity lost as a result of the recent closure of Budget Travel and other tour operators, whose business at Dublin has collapsed under the DAA’s high fees.

Ryanair will grow by over 7m passengers to 73m this year but all this expansion is taking place at EU airports and countries where governments  are reducing airports costs (in some cases to zero) and are scrapping tourist taxes. Ryanair will open new bases in 2010 in Bari, Brindisi, Faro, Malaga, Oslo (Rygge) and Leeds Bradford to support its continued growth.

Announcing these summer 2010 Dublin 20% cuts, Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said: “The DAA’s high costs and the Govt’s €10 tourist tax have already cost Ireland more than 3m passengers in 2009. Today’s further cut backs means Ryanair will carry 2 million less passengers at Dublin and 1 million fewer passengers at Shannon in 2010/11. Irish tourism is now suffering a Govt induced tourism collapse under the weight of the €10 tourist tax and the extraordinary anti-consumer order by the Dept of Transport (to the Aviation Regulator) to approve increases in DAA fees of 40% to pay for a Terminal 2 which Dublin’s airlines neither want nor need.

At a time when Govt's and airports all over Europe are scrapping taxes and slashing fees to win Ryanair’s traffic growth, sadly the Irish Govt is more interested in protecting its high cost DAA monopoly at the expense of consumers or of our tourism industry and until this damaging policy is reversed, Dublin Airport and Irish tourism will continue to suffer traffic cuts and job losses.

“These events continue to prove Ryanair’s case that the Dept of Transport is a corrupt and rotten organisation, whose sole policy is to protect the DAA monopoly, even at the expense of Irish aviation, tourism and jobs. The only future for T2 is to put it into NAMA. After all, we believe the DAA is bankrupt and the building will be empty so let’s stick it into NAMA and covert it into flats or a conference centre for North County Dublin”.

The Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) said Ryanair for its own reasons has announced that it intends to reduce passenger choice by cutting some services from Dublin Airport.

Ryanair’s own business environment has contributed to the airline’s decision to withdraw some services from Dublin Airport, while at the same time launching new routes and expanding other destinations. These decisions are not related to passenger charges as Dublin, which remains one of Europe’s most competitively priced large airports.

Ryanair’s public position does not stand up to scrutiny. If, as it claims, charges at Dublin Airport are one of the key reasons that it is reducing capacity, why do those same charges not have any impact on the company’s desire to offer additional flights to sun destination from Dublin this year? A passenger pays the same charge at Dublin Airport whether they are flying to Malaga or to Manchester. Ryanair is making these changes to suit Ryanair’s own financial position, as is always the case.

Dublin’s proposed passenger charge for 2010 is 25% lower than the average €12.50 passenger charge levied in 2008 by comparable European airports such as Stansted, Gatwick, Brussels, Copenhagen, Lisbon, Zurich, Vienna, Munich, Oslo.

Earlier this week, the DAA said Dublin Airport announced a new range of incentives under which the passenger charge for 2010 would be reduced by 5% if airlines maintained their 2009 traffic levels this year. In this scenario, one million passengers could have passed through the airport for free this year.

The DAA said Ryanair claimed today that it is reducing capacity on certain routes and putting up prices from because of alleged high charges at Dublin Airport. However yesterday, Ryanair’s chief financial officer Howard Millar gave a completely different reason for the move.

“We’re in the midst of recession and we expect to slow down our growth,” Millar told the news agency Bloomberg. He added that the company would increase its profits by putting up fares.

Airport charges at Dublin Airport are regulated by the independent Commission for Aviation Regulation (CAR) and the regulator has decided that the appropriate charge for this year is €9.32. On a like-for-like basis, this equates to a €1.76 increase in charges.

The DAA said it seems odd that an airline that regularly charges passengers €10 each for the privilege of paying for a return flight by credit card should argue that this change will cause a seismic shift in travel patterns.

Ryanair’s own charges have soared in recent years:

• Ryanair’s baggage check-in charge has increased by 600% since 2006
• The charge for using a credit card to book a Ryanair flight has almost trebled since 2006
• The cost of changing a Ryanair flight booking has almost doubled since 2006.

The DDA said Ryanair also continues to spread untruths/lies about the cost of Terminal Two, Dublin Airport’s new passenger terminal, which will open this November. The overall T2 project, which includes the new passenger terminal, the new boarding gate facility known as Pier E, a new energy centre, new aircraft parking stands and a major upgrade of Dublin Airport’s internal road network is €609 million.

The €609 million investment in the T2 project, which is being undertaken without any State funding, will improve the passenger experience at Dublin Airport for many decades to come. To view T2 merely through the prism of the current downturn is a hugely short-sighted.

T2 is the right terminal, at the right cost and will help position Ireland to take full advantage of the upturn when it comes, the DAA said.