Ryanair axing its Basel routes

From December 2 2009 Ryanair will be closing all six of its routes to and from Basel, Switzerland’s third largest city, as a result of a dispute over the airport’s charges.

The Irish low-cost carrier has however reassured passengers that a full refund will be provided to those travellers due to travel to Basel on or after December 2.

Ryanair's spokesman Stephen McNamara said: "Ryanair continues to lower fares to encourage travel, but with passengers paying lower fares airports must lower their charges - particularly high cost airports like Basel, London (Stansted) and Dublin.

"Ryanair had offered new routes, traffic and growth to Basel Airport but since they prefer to preserve their high cost base than to grow, Ryanair will now close all its Basel routes resulting in the loss of 250,000 passengers p.a. and up to 250 jobs at Basel.

"Ryanair will continue to grow at low cost airports which work with us to deliver the low fares required to keep passengers flying during this recession. Ryanair apologises to passengers affected by these cancellations and will contact them in the coming weeks to provide them with a full refund.

© Cheapflights Ltd

Comments

[Ron]

Unfortunately any reductions by airports do not seem to be reflected by Ryanair in its "taxes and fees" section.
For example, the fees to fly from Prestwick are only 0.07GBP cheaper than those for Edinburgh and only 1.41GBP cheaper than Stansted.

[Geoff]

Manchester now Basel, everyone else makes a go at these airports. Ryanair continues to lower fares to encourage travel it says. Fares may be cheap but all the extra charges aren't.

[Roman]

It seems that Ryanair tries to reduce airport cost in order to increase its margins rather than to lower its fares. Maybe in order to stop its yield decline.