EU to probe Ryanair Finnish operation

THE European Commission has opened an investigation into Ryanair’s use of a terminal at the airport in Tampere, Finland, a commission spokesman said.

The terminal, which is being used only by Ryanair, is a cargo hall that has been turned into a no-frills passenger hall that costs less to maintain, meaning Ryanair pays less than other airlines for operating at the airport.

Ryanair has signed a three-year deal with Travel Extras that will see the airline's passengers being provided for with new airport lounge and pre-bookable car-parking facilities.

The multi-million euro partnership was put out to tender earlier this year after Ryanair's previous car-parking contract with British company Holiday Extras came up for renewal.

Initially the new services will cover 19 of the 90 or so European airports which the low-fares airline uses including Dublin and Shannon.

The long-term plan is to roll-out the offer across all of its locations. Fourteen of the initial 19 airports are based in the Britain, but also include Barcelona-Girona, Rome-Ciampino and Venice-Treviso.

Santina Doherty, head of advertising and ancillary revenue at Ryanair, said: "It's an important service for our customers, especially those using any of our 14 hubs around Europe.

"We'd have a starting figure of 1.5m passengers travelling through each of these airports every year. This year alone, we expect to have 15m passengers using Stansted Airport."

Doherty also stressed the deal will not lead to higher passenger fares. Travel Extra pays Ryanair commission for new customers it picks up through the Ryanair website. Passengers can pre-book both car parking and lounge facilities on the website, which also has a link to Travel Extra's site.

While pre-book car parking is still relatively new here, it has been in use at British airports for around 20 years. Ryanair claims passengers can expect discounts of as much as 60% on car-parking through the new deal.

Travel Extras, a subsidiary of Mayday Holdings which owns a number of car rental and chauffeur service businesses, links up with airlines and airports to offer specific ancillary services for passengers.

Pre-booked car parking forms the largest part of its business, but it also deals in hotel accommodation, car rental and travel insurance services.

Travel Extras already has passenger lounge agreements in place with both Cork and Dublin Airports and is the preferred car rental and travel insurance partner to a number of low fares airlines which have Irish routes like FlyBe and BMI Baby.

The new Ryanair arrangement only deals with airport lounges and car-parking, as the Irish airline already has deals in place for car rental (with Hertz) and travel insurance through Primary in Britain and Mondial for continental Europe.