Thousands of Irish people living in the UK make the trip home for Christmas every year.
Michael O’Leary has warned travellers that a ticket from London to Dublin could cost as much as €500 this Christmas period, as Dublin Airport continues to limit the budget airline’s flight and passenger numbers.
The Ryanair boss and the Irish Aviation Authority have had a contentious relationship in recent months over flight capacity, and the IAA’s latest move has really irritated O’ Leary.
The Irish entrepreneur revealed to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme earlier this week that his airline, along with others, had applied for extra slots for flights this Christmas but were refused by the IAA.
“We run about 270,000 extra slots at Christmas time every year just to keep fares down,” he said. “We can’t run those extra slots… therefore the fares this Christmas will be double or triple.
“We think the fares will be about €500 one-way.”
Mr O’Leary said he was also informed of a reduction of one million passengers at Dublin Airport next year in a letter from an Irish Aviation Authority on August 14.
“They have written to all the airlines at the airport and the DAA inviting us to submit proposals as to how such a reduction would be implemented in practice and to ensure that any such reduction would be optimally implemented,” he said.
Responding to O’Leary’s criticisms, the IAA stated that they conducted a review of Dublin Airport’s capacity ahead of the upcoming season, and the results of that review led them to pull back on its allowances.
“That consultation closed on Wednesday 24 April, and we published a final decision on capacity for the Winter 2024/5 season on 7 May,” a spokesperson for the IAA said.
Dublin Airport has been operating at capacity for some time and, as a result, airlines are not guaranteed that the ‘slots’ – or flight times will be available.
Airlines apply for these slots and Dublin Airport award them accordingly.
Some airlines argue that the cap is impacting their businesses as a result, as the airport cannot award every slot that is applied for.
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Mr O’Leary labelled the IAA’s response as “bureaucratic waffle” and referred to their decision as “ridiculous”.
“The problem here is that we have a ridiculous traffic cap of 32 million passengers on the main gateway airport in Ireland,” he said. “It was imposed in 2007 because there was serious concerns about road access to the airport. Those fears no longer apply.
“Fingal County Council don’t even respect the cap because they have issued planning approval for a second runway which takes passenger numbers in Dublin Airport up to 60 million passengers,” Mr O’Leary added.
During his interview with RTÉ Radio, the Ryanair boss said a number of times that he believed Transport Minister Eamon Ryan was “incompetent” and called for Taoiseach Simon Harris to intervene to make the change.
“An effective Transport Minister would scrap this cap,” he said.
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