Ryanair flights: Airline cuts flights to popular Spanish holiday destinations including Santander and Cádiz - affecting 800,000 passengers

Due to ‘unjustified’ price hikes, the airline will be scrapping or reducing routes to seven Spanish destinations. The decision means 800,000 customers have had their flights cancelled completely, and equates to an 18% reduction in Ryanair’s operations.

CEO Eddie Wilson said in a statement that the change in schedule came down to Aena, Spain’s state-controlled airport operator, issuing ‘unjustified’ price hike in airport charges. Airport charges are the fees that airlines pay to use the airport’s facilities. Aena had initially scaled back their charges during the pandemic, but Ryan say they’ve been increasing since.

Wilson said: Aena’s excessive airport charges and lack of workable growth incentives continue to undermine Spain’s regional airports, limiting their growth and leaving vast swathes of airport’s capacity under utilised.’

Wilson continued to call out Aena for its decisions, claiming the operator is failing to ‘support Spain’s regional growth’ and is instead focusing on foreign investments in airports across the Caribbean, UK, and the Americas. He added: “Aena’s refusal to incentivise airlines to use underutilised capacity at its regional airports has forced Ryanair to reallocate aircraft and capacity to more competitive European markets, such as Italy, Sweden, Croatia, Hungary, and Morocco, where governments are actively incentivising growth”.

However, Aena told The Independent that its average fee of €10.35 (£8.75) per passenger is ‘among the lowest in Europe.’ The seven routes Ryanair is cancelling or limiting flights in and out of hold a special place in the hearts of Europeans. Santiago de Compostela, for example, attracts over 400,000 pilgrim visitors each year.

The airline will be scrapping or reducing routes to seven Spanish destinations.

It will be stopping all flights to and from:

• Jerez (Cádiz)
• Vallodolid

It will also reduce flights in and out of:

• Vigo
• Santiago de Compostela
• Zaragoza
• Santander
• Asturias