Ryanair warns of flight cuts that could impact Britons travelling to Europe

Aviation Tax for German air access was recently increased by 24 per cent and Ryanair has threatened to drop 10 per cent of its capacity to Germany for summer 2025.

This would be around 1.5 million seats. The airline added it would switch capacity to other EU countries including Italy, Poland, Spain and Portugal.

Ryanair’s CEO Eddie Wilson said: “Germany’s air travel market is broken and needs an urgent fix. Germany has only recovered 82 per cent of its pre-Covid traffic which is by far the worst performance of any EU State.

"As a result of these high Government taxes/fees (the highest in Europe), and Lufthansa’s high-fare monopoly, German citizens/visitors now pay the highest air fares in Europe.

"Ryanair again calls on the German Government to cut its very high aviation taxes and fees. If these very high taxes are not reduced, Ryanair will cut another 1.5 million seats from its German capacity (minus 10 per cent) for summer 2025.

"These reductions will further damage inbound touris, and Germany’s post-Covid recovery, whilst other competitor EU States, with much lower or zero aviation taxes/fees, enjoy the benefit of traffic growth which is being switched from high-cost uncompetitive Germany.”

This comes as Ryanair apologised for "cancellations and delays" in Majorca last week as aircrafts were blocked from the airport.

Flights were stopped from entering the Spanish airport because of poor weather conditions, although flights left the airport as normal.

Ryanair’s chief ops officer Neal McMahon said: “This is the latest example of terrible Air Traffic Control performance this summer, which has caused repeated and unnecessary disruption to passengers.

“Ryanair once again calls on Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, to reform the shambolic ATC services.”

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A spokesperson for the airline added: “Ryanair today apologised to its passengers for the excessive delays and cancellations at Palma de Majorca following the nonsensical decision by Spanish Air Traffic Control to block inbound aircraft from landing this morning due to ‘weather’, which makes no sense given that there were no weather issues in Palma this morning as confirmed by the fact that flights departing Palma were allowed to continue as normal.

“Passengers were allowed to leave Palma de Mallorca but those coming on holiday were not allowed to arrive.

“Ryanair has been unable to contact the Head of Spanish ATC this morning to reverse this nonsensical decision and now calls on the Spanish Minister of Transport to explain why Palma de Mallorca was closed for arriving passengers due to non-existent weather issues.”