Spain airport taxes rise causes Ryanair axe winter flights - Ryanair faces for this summer of 2021 the largest deployment of domestic flights in its history, and not only aims to recover the normality before the pandemic, but its ambitious goal for 2026 is to reach organically the 200 million passengers worldwide.

However, in view of the upcoming winter season, Ryanair could change its schedule and reduce flights in Spain.

The reason for this change would be the increase of more than 5% in airport taxes proposed by Aena for the next 5 years, instead of the 2% reduction that has been ruled by the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) in its non-binding report. If the increase finally comes into effect, the Irish airline threatens to reduce flight numbers.

According to El Confidencial, the CNMC considers that the rates of Aena should fall by 0.44% annually during the next five years.

Spain airport taxes rise causes Ryanair axe winter flights

The newspaper El País also picks up the perspective of Dara Brady, Director of Marketing & Digital of Ryanair, who says that it makes no sense to make efforts to reduce tariffs while facing "excessively expensive rates". Taxes are one of the elements that have the most influence on the cost of air tickets, especially short-haul tickets.

"Spain is competing with other countries for tourism and it makes no sense to put more routes in Spain if the rates are higher," Brady points out in statements to El Economista. The responsible warns that other markets such as Italy, Cyprus or Malta are displacing Spain in tourist interest.

Spain airport taxes rise causes Ryanair axe winter flights

To face the recovery, the best strategy in the opinion of the airline is to lower rates as an incentive. If the airport manager finally raises fees, they will review the impact it will have on their business and weigh moving to another country. "We will decide where to put our planes for the winter and the future," Brady says.

Spain airport taxes rise causes Ryanair axe winter flights: Ryanair offers travelers this summer in Spain 60 routes to 28 countries and 70 national connections, totaling a total of 2,500 weekly flights. In the Spanish market, the low-cost airline has 70 aircraft and assumes more than 2,000 direct jobs.

The head of Marketing & Digital Ryanair also criticized the state aid received by Air Europa and qualified as discriminatory rescue fund managed by the State Society of Industrial Participations (SEPI) for being only available to airlines with a base in Spain, and recalled that several companies that have received aid from the EU as Lufthansa, Air France and Tap are rescues companies

Brady recalled that Ryanair has resorted to twenty aid that governments have granted to companies such as Lufthansa, and insisted that they are bailouts for companies that were already in difficulty before the pandemic.

Spain airport taxes rise causes Ryanair axe winter flights

More news:

Summer sales start in free fall: visits to physical stores in Spain decrease by 45% in the first 10 days of the campaign

A few weeks ago the Spanish Confederation of Commerce (CEC) expected that the sales volume for the sales campaign, which began to a greater extent on June 24, would be reactivated with respect to last year.

The employers, of course, spoke of "slight improvement" and always against the data of the 2020 campaign. He warned that the figures would be far from those recorded in 2019. In this way they estimated that the turnover could still fall between 20% and 30% with respect to that year.

Now, the platform of catalogs and digital offers Tiendeo, details that in the first 10 days of sales the flow of consumers to physical stores in Spain has decreased by 45% in relation to the summer sales campaign 2020.

But if the influx to stores falls, so does the purchase intention (-41%) compared to the values of the previous year. The same goes for the 59% drop in the volume of sales and offers searches. "This is a surprising drop considering that during the sales, consumers seek to discover the best bargains or find the most attractive discounted offers," they point out from the platform.

The background in the fashion sector does not help either: in January, during the winter sales, the textile trade plummeted by 53.2% and the fall even surpassed the end of 2020, which stood at almost 40%, according to data from the fashion employers ' association Acotex.

With an increase of 543%, the sport category has registered the best performance in the search volume in these first days of sales. Moda, meanwhile, has gained a discreet 6%. The negative key comes from the fall of the other categories analyzed as garden and DIY (-68%), home (-39%) and electronics (-32%).

However, product divisions such as electronics or fashion have found their best habitat in the online channel. In fact, at the beginning of the year, even with physical commerce already recovering its activity, the online channel remained intact, especially in the textile sector. According to data from the affiliate network Admitad Affiliate, until April, the number of online sales in fashion rebounded by 73% over the same period last year.

During 2020 and in general terms,

This increase placed the national territory above key countries such as the United States (29.4%), the United Kingdom (29.1%) or Germany (14.4 %).