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Ryanair boss O’Leary in blast at airport chiefs
by Jon Myles
RYANAIR boss Michael O’Leary has attacked bosses at Birmingham Airport claiming they have lost out on trade because of a refusal to embrace low-fare airlines.
The outspoken airline chief accused airport management of failing to capitalise on the growth of the cheap flights market.
His criticism came as he announced Ryanair would give away 30,000 free fights on two new daily routes from Birmingham to Barcelona’s Girona Airport and Murcia in southern Spain as well as on the increased five-times-a-day service to Dublin.
But his comments sparked a bitter war of words in the low-cost airline industry.
Rival carrier MyTravelLite accused Ryanair of pulling the wool over passengers’ eyes as Girona Airport is more than 50 miles outside Barcelona city centre.
Mr O’Leary warned the airport would never achieve its ambition to become Britain’s biggest out-side London unless it made better deals with low-cost companies.
“The future of the industry is low fares, but Birmingham is too comfortable hanging off the coat-tails of British Airways,” he said.
“The aviation industry is passing Birmingham by and it might be proud of annual passenger increases of six per cent but when airports like Stansted and Glasgow are increasing by more than 30 per cent it puts what Birmingham is doing in perspective.
“Birmingham should be doubling its passenger figures and should be twice as big as Manchester but it’s holding itself back because it doesn’t want the cheap flights.
“Between 15 and 20 per cent of Ryanair’s passengers from Stansted are from Birmingham and the West Midlands — who I’m sure would rather fly from their local airport if the price was right but they are more willing to drive two hours to Stansted to save money.”
Mr O’Leary said the airport’s board had wasted millions of pounds on a new expansion plan during the past 10 years instead of concentrating on developing operator links.
But his comments were instantly dismissed by Birmingham Airport.
A spokesman said low-cost airlines FlyBe and MyTravelLite had both been successful flying from Birmingham — and the airport offered an incentive scheme to all airlines trying to develop new routes.
“It has proved acceptable to other airlines such as MyTravelLite who have found it perfectly possible to successfully develop 12 low-cost fare routes from Birmingham,” he said.
And a spokeswoman for MyTravelLite said: “Our customers love our low fares, our service and our big choice of destinations, the convenience of direct routes to some of the biggest tourist hotspots in Europe — not to mention secondary airports like Ryanair’s Girona, which is miles away from Barcelona.”
Ryanair is now the biggest low-cost airline outside America and is expected to carry 24million passengers this year.
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