European ultra low cost carrier Ryanair and the Spanish government are currently in a bit of a spat. Ryanair is used to going on the offense against regulators, but my goodness, Spanish regulators have just hit back in a way I’ve never seen before.
Continue reading: Spain Accuses Ryanair Of Extortion, Blackmail, Dishonesty, Poor Taste
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Beautifully written rebuttal by Aena. Ryanair won't vacate the market, because there's plenty of players that would love to take up any slack.
May literally anyone else replace the million seat capacity cut so we can all move on from this annoying airline
They said if the passenger fee increase goes ahead they'd pull out. Lo and behold...
Let's be honest. We'd all love to own a business that carries such clout as Ryanair.
"the airline is not obliged to use Aena airports"
so why are you even saying any of this
All hail Aena! Thank you for standing up to the bullying tactics of O’Leary and Co.
I’d say that demonic subsumes supernatural in this context and renders the supernatural term superfluous. Otherwise pretty accurate.
Great pullout when you just redirect winter flights. I'd like to see them do the same on next year's summer schedule and see their competitors gorge themselves with Ryanair's market share and dividends.
Pure gold, no sympathy for RyanAir. Aena is correct. No one will miss a few low value British party tourists puking their way through Spain and RA went unopposed far to long. Good riddance, other countries should follow!
Of course everyone would love to profit from contractors essentially delivering free (or very sub-cost) services for political reasons. That's why it's important that airports stand up to that idea. That's not how free market is supposed to work.
Well said. Ryanair are an awful company, the worse of capitalist greed, and race to the bottom and should be given no grace whatsoever. This is how every government and regulator should respond to them. Well done aena!
Doesn't make it less true, which company or government doesn't use AI at that point so no reason to think the point is less valid. No gotcha here in my opinion.
Careful now Chris, the “Puking British party tourists” are not the only passengers RyanAir ‘cattle truck’ into Spain, etc. Thousands of EU passengers use the airline too you know.
Your suggested alternative Spanish airports not under Spanish Government control would be appreciated betterbub?
Who cares? It effectively slags off the nastiest airline c suite in the world.
Spain's right wing Partido Popular also made remarks about AENA risking RyanAir's business over these fees and Lucena was having NONE of it, saying, in effect, that the raises are a product of PP's own laws.
If Ryanair doesn't want to fly somewhere, they're free not to. I don't understand the entire statement where they complain about Ryanair and then just say "we don't need their business". So what's even the point
AI wouldn't have made the mistakes AENA did in their statement. There are quite a few instances of wrong English terms being used, which suggests it's indeed written by a human.
Get used to it. AI is here and every company worth its salt is using it. The difference-maker is whether a company can use it intelligently, in tandem with expert human oversight.
If I was 18-25 again and could walk on a plane with just my phone and the clothes on my back and figure the rest out at my destination... me.
Classy - points out Ryanair's hypocrisy (and its operational excellence) without lowering itself to Ryanair-style insulting language.
ryanair are evil. intentionally splitting up passengers on the same booking if they dont pay to pick a seat is absolutely scummy behavior.
if they dont like aena, dont fly there.
It is the winter schedule, a lot. If Spanish destinations see less traffic than in summer. While Ryanair may have increased the cuts a bit, a lot of it is the usual winter reshuffling of capacity combined taking the PR opportunities. They'll be back for the summer schedule when everyone has probably forgotten this little row.
Why? They clearly didn't considering the amount of wrong English terms in the statement, a mistake LLM would not make.
205 million passengers last year. So please elaborate on the phrase “ who wants to fly them” ?
I’ve flown them a few times and never had any issues. A couple of tech delays and compensation paid within 10 days.
In fact the service is equal or better than that of most carriers in the US if you’re flying economy.
I also fly premium cabins on numerous other carriers. If Ryanair suits me, I’ll book them. They won’t stop flying to Spain where they operate to/from around 40 destinations.
Good to see some pushback on a big corp, especially one as pushy and demanding of taxpayer resources as Ryanair. And honestly, Spain is looking at dialing back mass / low-end tourism. So no the worst outcome. It's Ryanair's loss if they pull back, it seems.
The original statement is not in English, Ben is quoting what it probably is a Google Translation of it. Why would a Spanish public entity release a statement in English? Silly boomer.
It is refreshing to see that someone in Europe actually responds properly on such sort of bullying...
Three things:
1. AENA regularly issues official statements in both English and Spanish; the original English can be found at: https://www.aena.es/en/press/statement-by-the-chairman-and-ceo-of-aena-maurici-lucena-on-the---announcement-by-ryanair.html
2. The fact that the statement is written in a complex, nuanced, and well-reasoned manner not entail that it was written with ChatGPT.
3. The sole instances of "wrong English" are one unnecessary comma, and the use of the word "eyelid" instead of "eyelash" in an idiomatic expression.
@Lebl - Quite rich of you to accuse me of being a boomer while showing the most boomerish behaviour imaginable yourself 🙂 It's 2025 and we live in the EU. English is our lingua franca and it's absolutely normal for companies to issue statements in it on matters of cross-state relevance, such as you know, a freaking Spanish airport operator on a dispute with an Irish airline. Duh. My local airport company of virtually no significance that barely handles 2 milion pax a year translates every single press release into English because, well, they're a bloody airport company. It's not 80's anymore, as much as it may come as a surprise to ignorant Americans who think we live under a rock.
Google Translate basically runs on LLM these days, so again, it likely wouldn't have made mistakes we see in that statement. This was clearly produced by a human. There's literally nothing suggesting it was generated by an LLM, neither in Spanish nor in English.
With love, a millennial.
Spain has a far left communist government to the left of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. They go after all business and their ideology is extremely communist. You don't want to live in Spain especially if you have to pay taxes and deal with these angry communists who actually lost the elections but they keep control of power because it's a dictatorship. I live in Spain and I absolutely hate the Spanish government and the half of the Spanish people that are more communist than even Cubans or Soviets. This is why they don't care if they close all the airports because they would prefer you to take an electric scooter or a free subsidized bus or maybe an electric train run by windmills that don't have any backup power supply.
How about Spain first take control of Iberia and their consistent lack of regulations for honoring EU261 before we start on Ryanair. I understand Ryanair isn't the most honest airline but you also need to look at yourself before pointing fingers.
Well, some in Spain have been complaining about over tourism, so at least they will be happy. Meanwhile, Ryanair hasn't cancelled my February flight out of BCN.
Why? It's actually quite well written, considering it was probably translated from a Spanish language original.