Ryanair has announced plans to cut its London Stansted traffic by 9% over the coming year due to rising airport charges.
Ryanair claims it had planned to grow its Stansted traffic by 5% from April, but will now cut frequencies on 43 of its routes and reduce its weekly operations by over 170 flights.
The airline claims the 6% rise in April is unjustified and is on top of "already high charges".
It has called on the CAA to investigate whether the price hike was a "sweetener" by Ferrovial/BAA’s sale of Stansted to the Manchester Airport Group. The sale was finalised today.
Ryanair’s Robin Kiely said: "It is impossible to understand why the BAA monopoly is again raising Stansted’s prices from April 2013 when it clearly won’t be running the airport from that date.
"Ryanair and other Stansted airlines now must ask was this surprise price increase part of a "sweetener" package to persuade MAG to pay £1.5bn for Stansted? Are passengers and airlines at Stansted again being hit in order to boost the sales proceeds for the Spanish giant, Ferrovial, from the sale of BAA Stansted?"
