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Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary has been very vocal about Brexit and the impact it will have on Ryanair, and he doubled down on earlier claims that Ryanair may have to cancel flights between the UK and Europe when Brexit happens.
O’Leary warned that flights between the UK and EU could halt in 2019 if there’s a hard Brexit and no deal is reached between the two parties.
He stated that if the UK exits the EU without a deal, it will also exit the Open Skies treaty which allows any airline in the EU to fly to another point in the EU. A new deal would have to be negotiated between the UK and the EU.
“The problem with the legislation is,” O’Leary said. “If the UK leaves the European Union, automatically, it must leave Open Skies. Therefore, as things stand, there’ll be no flight rights between the UK and Europe and vice versa.
“It is a guillotine, it happens at the end of March. The UK government has to negotiate a bi-lateral, not with individual states but with the EU 27.
“There is no sign of any bilateral deal being negotiated and no sign of any agreement.”
He continued to reinforce his claim that Ryanair will be cancelling flights if no agreement is reached, although he did concede that it’s unlikely to be a long term cancellation.
“Aviation comes up six months before March 2019, we’re filing our schedules for Summer 2019 in September of 2018, and if we don’t have the right to fly, we’ll be cancelling those flights,” O’Leary said.
Video via BBC Newsnight
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