Ryanair cuts flights and jobs
19.02.09
Ryanair is reducing its capacity at Liverpool Airport, citing the ‘government's greedy APD’ and the weak pound as the two main reasons for the cuts. The budget airline will axe 10 routes from the airport, resulting in the loss of 50 pilot, cabin crew and engineering jobs.
The destinations to be withdrawn include Paris, Budapest, Valencia, Faro and Lodz, and the airline anticipates future cuts in next winter's schedule. One aircraft will be removed from the airport, leaving six at the hub. As a consequence, the airport is expected to suffer a 200,000 passenger drop from 2.7 million to 2.5 million between 2008 and 2009, Ryanair said.
The Irish budget airline's Deputy chief executive, Michael Cawley, said: ‘The decision by the Government to continue to impose high Air Passenger Duty charges and increase them over the next two years is completely unacceptable given the current economic climate.'
He obviously forgets that the airline has introduced its own extra costs for passengers - in the form of check-in, hold luggage and credit card fees - and increased them equally as aggressively. And just as APD bears little relation to the environmental cost of the flight, Ryanair's credit and debit card charges bear little relation to the actual costs of accepting these cards.
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