Budget airline plans to ground seven aircraft in response to airport charges

RYANAIR plans to ground nearly a fifth of its aircraft at London’s Stansted Airport over the winter months.

The carrier said the move was in response to a doubling of airport charges making it impossible for it to make money on some routes.

The airline said it will ground seven of its 40 aircraft at Stansted and is also planning to cut capacity on some European routes.

“The facilities at Stansted aren’t the best in the world. People are spending increasing amount of times in queues for security and at passport control.

“We have the ironic situation on short routes that people are spending longer in the security queue than on the planes,” said Ryanair finance director Neil

Sorahan.

The move will help Ryanair cut its cost base over the winter, though it had scaled back its forecast for passenger numbers as a result.

The airline had expected to carry 52 million people in its financial year, which ends in March 2008, but the reduction in capacity out of Stansted will shave 2m off the figure.

Mr Sorahan said there were no plans to scale back its expansion out of Dublin Airport.

The airline also reiterated that will be appealing the EU’s decision to block the takeover of Aer Lingus.

“The EU commission has for the last 20 years been encouraging EU airlines to merge, and they have already approved much larger mergers such as Air France/KLM and Lufthansa/Swiss.

“We look forward to the European court overturning this unprecedented, and we believe nakedly political, decision,” said Ryanair.