RYANAIR has scrapped flights to another popular European destination over “sky-high” charges.
The Irish airline has decided to stop all flights from Maastricht Airport in the Netherlands due to rising aviation costs.
Ryanair has stopped flying to a popular Dutch airport[/caption]
Starting October 26, Ryanair will cancel every route it operates from Maastricht due to the airport’s high fees and the country’s increasing aviation taxes.
They have said Maastricht is one of the most pricey airports in Europe, and the charges could harm air travel connections in the Netherlands.
Back in 2021, Maastricht introduced an environmental tax that charges Ryanair with nearly €30 for each passenger flying out.
And this tax has been in place in other major European hotspots.
This has led Ryanair to also cut the number of flights – including those to Alicante, Bari, Girona, Porto, and Zadar which wipes out around 150,000 seats each year.
Jason McGuinness, Ryanair’s Chief Commercial Officer said the taxes at Maastricht have skyrocketed by 275 percent in just four years.
He said: “Ryanair continues to grow traffic – this year from 200m to 206m – by offering unbeatable low fares to customers across Europe at airports that have low access costs.
“Maastricht’s sky-high costs are damaging its connectivity.
“It is evidenced by the Airport’s failure to recover its traffic post-Covid, lagging far behind the rest of Europe at just 50 per cent of pre-Covid traffic in 2024.”
Earlier this year, the budget airline trimmed summer flights in Spain by 18 per cent, cutting 800,000 seats and a dozen routes.
Similarly, the airline pulled all flights to and from Aalborg after Denmark introduced a €6.70 passenger fee, which airlines are required to cover.
Ryanair called the tax “harmful” and said it forced them to scrap flights to major Danish airports like Aalborg and Billund.
This move means Ryanair is losing around 1.7 million seats and closing several routes in Denmark.
And back in September 2023, they pulled 17 routes for the winter season, blaming a 45 per cent hike in passenger charges at Dublin Airport.
They also moved their special eco-friendly “Gamechanger” planes to other airports that offer better deals.
Then in September 2024, Ryanair said it would cut another 14 routes due to a passenger cap at Dublin Airport, which only allows 32 million travellers a year.
Some of the routes cut included places like Asturias, Castellón, and Santiago in Spain, plus airports in Denmark, the UK, France, Italy, Austria, Slovakia, Germany, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland.
ROUTES CUT
And just this week, Ryanair decided to suspend its flights to Tel Aviv due to ongoing security concerns and instability in the region.
The airline had briefly resumed operations in the past month, but recent security issues due to the war in Gaza have made the service too unreliable.
CEO Michael O’Leary stated that safety remains the top priority and that conditions in the area no longer support regular flight operations.
He said: “I think we’re running out of patience too with Israel… flights to and from Tel Aviv.
“If they’re going to keep being disrupted by these security disruptions, frankly, we’d be better off sending those aircraft somewhere else in Europe.”
