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Ryanair has stated that it will switch/close nine of its 10 Manchester routes to airports in East Midlands, Leeds Bradford and Liverpool from October 1 after Manchester Airport refused to lower its charges.

Published: 18 Aug 2009

Ryanair has stated that it will switch/close nine of its 10 Manchester routes to airports in East Midlands, Leeds Bradford and Liverpool from October 1 after Manchester Airport refused to lower its charges.

This move will result in the loss of 44 weekly Manchester flights, 600,000 passengers p.a. and up to 600 local jobs. Ryanair said as it continues to lower fares to encourage travel, airports must lower their charges – particularly high cost airports like Manchester, London (Stansted) and Dublin.

Ryanair’s Manchester routes to/from Barcelona (Girona), Bremen, Brussels (Charleroi), Cagliari, Dusseldorf (Weeze), Frankfurt (Hahn), Marseille, Milan (Bergamo) and Shannon will cease from October 1.

Manchester Airport, a regional hub in the Northwest of England, handled two million passengers in July, down 10 percent from a year earlier as the recession hit demand for air travel.

The airport reportedly hit back at Ryanair, saying its charges are reasonable.

“Notwithstanding all of our investment in Manchester Airport including during the current recession, we don’t believe that charges as low as £3 per passenger are unreasonable. Clearly, Ryanair do and that’s regrettable,” a spokesman for the airport said. “We’ve consistently cut our charges for the last 15 years, even when faced with increased costs such as security.”

Airports such as Liverpool, which is owned by Peel Airports, and Leeds Bradford, which is owned by Bridgepoint, the private equity firm, are particularly aggressive in attracting budget carriers.

Robin Tudor, a spokesman for Peel Airports, according to Times Online, said: “We do not reveal our commercial agreements with airlines, but I can say that we do have to be incredibly competitive. If we were not, the airlines would not continue to commit to us.”