Ryanair hit out at proposed passenger charge increase…

Ryanair hit out at proposed passenger charge increase at Dublin Airport

Budget airline Ryanair has slammed plans by Dublin Airport to increase passenger charges from this year.

The company have said that airlines should not be hit by the extra costs incurred by inflation.

It comes as the independent public body for the Department of Transport, the Commission for Aviation Regulation (CAR), proposed increases to Dublin Airport’s passenger charges.

If plans go ahead, charges would increase from €8.24 to approximately €8.52 between 2022 and 2026.

Ryanair has warned that it would be “unacceptable” to add these charges to the airline’s growing costs.

They have already seen increases across the board as a result of inflation and rising fuel costs stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to the Irish Times.

Ryanair's response was published in the stakeholders’ submissions in response to the proposed increases.

However, despite their comments regarding proposed increases, the low-cost airline said they approved of the CAR’s decision to not transfer more of Dublin Airport’s lockdown losses to airlines that use the hub.

According to the company, the CAR made airlines pay between €200 million to €220 million of the losses incurred by Dublin Airport during the pandemic.

Furthermore, daa plc, the operator in charge of both Dublin and Cork airports, said they wanted a larger increase of €14.77 per passenger by 2026.

This increase, they suggested, would help the airport in handling its predicted increase in passengers, a number they expect to jump to 40 million by 2030.

“Current pricing proposals do not provide sufficient funds for Dublin Airport to return to resilient operation post-Covid-19,” the operator said.

In the first half of this year, daa plc, reported a profit after tax of €23.6 million.

This compares to a €116.1 million loss during the same period in 2021 when Covid-19 lockdowns were in place in Ireland as well as many other parts of the world.

The company received €56.5 million in government pandemic supports in the first half of this year. That's more than double the supports it received for the whole of 2021.

Ryanair flight to Lisbon departs from Dublin Airport. (gettyimages.ie)

Between January and June of 2022, more than 13 million people passed through Dublin and Cork Airports. In Dublin Airport alone between April and June, 7.8 million people travelled via Dublin Airport.

At this time, the airport was making the wrong kinds of headlines. A new pay deal for security staff was the subject of Dáil debates while the queues made international headlines and forced the head of daa to come before an Oireachtas committee.

During the Covid-19 lockdowns, daa allowed 248 security staff members to take a voluntary redundancy package.

However, concerns were raised in March when it was revealed that the new staff members would be paid just €14.14 per hour and those staff members would be guaranteed just 20 hours of work per week while expecting them to be available to work 40 hours and on a 24/7 roster.

At the time, leader of People Before Profit Richard Boyd Barrett called those conditions “an absolute insult”.

The queues at Dublin Airport left Fine Gael TD Alan Farrell asking; “How many needs to be in the queue before somebody asks if heads should roll?".

Although the army was put on standby to help with the queues, it never became necessary.

Super junior minister with responsibility for aviation, Hildegarde Naughton, had also raised concerns over the cleanliness of Dublin Airport back in June.

Dublin Airport was far from the only one to have these problems. Staffing issues leading to long queues was seen across Europe, many of them also coming down to new pay deals for new staff.

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