Ryanair is to reduce the number of daily flights between Shannon Airport and London's Stansted Airport from four to two from January. The airline has blamed the increase in airport charges at Shannon for the decision.
Ryanair offers services to Glasgow, Frankfurt Hahn, Brussels Charleroi and Paris Beauvais from Shannon. It said it carried 306,000 passengers on the Shannon to Stansted route this year.
Aer Rianta announced increases in airport charges at Dublin, Shannon and Cork. Ryanair said the increase in charges at Shannon was of the order of 45 per cent and it said Aer Rianta was intent on strangling growth at Shannon.
An Aer Rianta spokesman said it was obviously disappointed that the airline was reducing its scheduled services from Shannon but refuted its claims about the scale of increase in airport charges.
The spokesman said the increase in passenger service charges was 15 per cent to €7.50. "This is a Ryanair public relations stunt and reflects the airline's switch to larger aircraft on this route," he suggested.
Ryanair is increasingly using Boeing 737-800 series jets which have a much larger capacity.
Even though it will have fewer flights from Shannon, it is possible that by using the larger planes, the actual number of passengers travelling to Stansted will not fall.
