kaunas ryanair
officially lithuanian ministry of transport says this is purely ryr wish to compete head to head with wizz in vilnius. unoficial info suggests it is much more complicated. kun and vno are located just 100km apart. the official strategy for years was that kaunas is an lcc base and vilnius is for legacy carriers. very similar relation like between zaventem and charleroi. kaunas was the first to bring both w6 and ryr to lt and was home to the first ever lcc base in the baltics, which was also first ryr base in central europe.
and then pure politics starts. you might be surprised but in lithuania you have a very centralised govt approach, at least if compared to western europe. with national carrier going bankrupt, vilnius airport was also desperately looking for new partners. kun was faster and a couple of years ago for some time had almost same number of pax as vilnius. due to the crisis vilnius did not manage to attract any serious legacy carriers thus the minister of transport decided there is a need to change a strategy and have lccs in vilnius too (up to 40 percent of the total i believe, guess it might have been exceeded). taking the belgian example, imagine federal mobility service deciding zaventem should open up to lccs and compete directly with charleroi (but under lithuanian terms ,meaning it is not private operators who manage the airports but people appointed by the ministry). hence vilnius agreed on wizzair flights/base, from that moment ryanair was programmed to set the foot to vilnius too. in response, kaunas tried to go to legacy carriers with little success (too close to vilnius and not a capital city). rumours goingthat once kaunas managed to persuade air baltic to have flight to riga, there was little of joy in the ministry, to put it softly.
anyway, the key problem is that the ministry sees kaunas airport is the headache for the local goverbnment while vilnius airport is a national priority with corresponding financing and marketing. also they seem to be quite keen to beat tallinn in pax numbers and the easiest is to move ryr flights to vilnius.
i guess there are no prospects for kaunas as long as the central government gives priority to vilnius. i assume there was lots of pressure put from the ministry on kaunas airport management, given that ceo announced resignation last week. if any ryanair insiders could tell more of their medium term plans for both airports, would be great.
interesting whether such a penetration of lccs in vilnius makes it still interesting for new legacy carriers. maybe someone from vilnius colleagues could comment, notably what would be the division of seats available in the winter season btw legacy carriers and lccs (i guess lccs might account for more than half, but that's a pure guess). my guess is that in winter there will be so much competition in vilnius in the lcc sector that financial gains for any newcomers won't be attractive. in addition, ex kaunas passengers from northwest lt will shift to riga, those from eastern poland and kaliningrad to warsaw modlin etc.
anyway a classic example of ryr power to boost and to kill an airport who depends almost exclusively on them. i am wondering what happens to their mro facility project in kaunas?