Ryanair’s five year Girona extension collapses as new government backtracks on deal
“Ryanair sincerely regrets that the new Government of Catalonia has failed to honour the recent five year extension of our base agreement at Girona Airport despite the fact that it was consulted on its detail by the outgoing Government. Sadly this will lead to significant traffic and job losses at Girona instead of 4m passengers and the 4,000 local jobs which would have been sustained had the Catalonia Government implemented the agreement which was concluded in December 2010.
Ryanair will now switch five aircraft from Girona with the loss of 18 routes, over 100 weekly flights, 1.7m passengers p.a. and 1,700 jobs to other airports elsewhere in Europe. It is a remarkable achievement by the new government to have caused such job and tourism losses within weeks of taking office. However, while this is a significant loss for Girona, Ryanair will continue to grow at other lower cost airports in Spain and elsewhere in Europe."