THIS WEEK, Ryanair turned its big guns on Manchester airport, stripping it of nine of its 10 routes and moving them to other English airports that the airline says have provided it with better deals on airport charges.

“Ryanair continues to lower fares to encourage travel, but with passengers paying lower fares, airports must lower their charges – particularly high-cost airports like Manchester, London Stansted and Dublin,” said Ryanair’s communications chief, Stephen McNamara.

“Ryanair offered new routes, traffic and growth to Manchester airport, but since they prefer to preserve their high cost base than to grow, Ryanair will now switch/close nine Manchester routes to East Midlands, Leeds Bradford and Liverpool from October 1st next, resulting in the loss of 600,000 passengers per annum and up to 600 jobs at Manchester.”

This move followed recent decisions by Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary to scale back services at both Dublin and Stansted airports for the airline’s upcoming winter schedule.

Remarkably, the one route that is being preserved at Manchester by Ryanair is the service to Dublin, which has been running since May 1994. It seems the low-cost airline has no problem continuing to operate directly between these two “high-cost airports”.

Ryanair said this was a “sectoral decision”. The aircraft is based in Dublin and would have to fly to another UK airport if were not to operate daily to Manchester.

But might it have anything to do with the fact that Dublin-Manchester was Ryanair’s fourth-busiest route in its last financial year?