{"id":504462,"date":"2025-10-16T15:26:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T15:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/504462\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T15:26:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T15:26:12","slug":"ryanair-slams-broken-german-aviation-market-and-slashes-800000-seats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/504462\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryanair slams \u201cbroken\u201d German aviation market and slashes 800,000 seats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ryanair has announced it is cutting hundreds of thousands of seats and two dozen routes from its German schedules in response to what it calls the German government\u2019s \u201cfailure to reduce high access costs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a statement released on 15th October 2025, the carrier said its winter 2025 capacity would be slashed by 800,000 and that it would cease to fly 24 of its routes across nine \u201chigh-cost German airports.\u201d That includes Berlin, Hamburg, and Memmingen. The carrier had already closed routes operating to and from Dortmund, Dresden, and Leipzig.<\/p>\n<p>The move sees Ryanair\u2019s winter 2025 capacity drop year-on-year. It comes not only in response to the access costs, such as airport and air traffic control charges, and security fees, but also is a reaction to Germany\u2019s decision to go ahead with aviation taxes it had previously said it would reverse. That combination, Ryanair says, makes Germany \u201cgrossly uncompetitive compared to other EU countries.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The budget Irish carrier contrasted Germany\u2019s policies with Ireland and Poland as nations with no aviation taxes, and noted that Hungary, Italy, and Sweden are scrapping theirs. Bizarrely, it also praised <a href=\"https:\/\/traveltomorrow.com\/ryanair-cuts-over-a-million-summer-seats-to-spain-amid-ongoing-fees-dispute\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Spain<\/a>\u2019s lack of aviation taxes, even though it has been in almost constant dispute with the Spanish government and airport operator Aena over their \u201cexcessive\u201d costs. After recent cuts to Spanish schedules, competitors stepped in to make up the slack.<\/p>\n<p>Pointing out that Germany \u201cremains among the worst recovered air traffic markets in Europe, operating at just 88% of pre-COVID levels,\u201d Ryanair warned that the cuts would have \u201ca devastating impact on German connectivity, jobs, and tourism,\u201d adding that \u201cwithout an immediate intervention, Germany will continue to fall further behind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The airline is calling on the German government and Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder to \u201ctake urgent action and reduce Germany\u2019s excessive access costs.\u201d This would enable Ryanair to deliver \u201ctransformative growth in Germany,\u201d thanks to a potential US$3 billion investment in 30 additional aircraft, growth to 34 million passengers per year, and 1,000 jobs across the country.<\/p>\n<p>Slamming the German market as \u201cbroken\u201d and in need of \u201can urgent fix,\u201d Ryanair\u2019s Chief Marketing Officer, Dara Brady, blamed the high charges and \u201cLufthansa\u2019s high-fare monopoly,\u201d which he said, \u201chave forced German citizens and visitors to pay the highest airfares in Europe.\u201d Without action, the situation would \u201ccontinue to decline,\u201d O\u2019Brady said, \u201cwhilst other more competitive European countries (with no aviation taxes) benefit from turbocharged Ryanair traffic growth \u2013 at Germany\u2019s expense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Minister Schneider has issued no response to the threat of cuts, nor to the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryanair has announced it is cutting hundreds of thousands of seats and two dozen routes from its German&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[13133,4328,2574,18620,115460,2000,299,2592,1824,165395,32523,118571,165396,1339,165394],"class_list":{"0":"post-504462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-air-travel","9":"tag-airports","10":"tag-berlin","11":"tag-dortmund","12":"tag-dresden","13":"tag-eu","14":"tag-europe","15":"tag-flights","16":"tag-germany","17":"tag-germany-aviation","18":"tag-hamburg","19":"tag-leipzig","20":"tag-memmingen","21":"tag-ryanair","22":"tag-ryanair-seats-capacity-cuts"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115384548664741205","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}