Ryanair used to fly daily to PIK from HHN. At the moment they fly approx once every two days to EDI, and have done for a long time now.
The tax is a convenient excuse, I think.

The report states:

Budget airline Ryanair is to axe 1,000 jobs

The cutbacks are at Frankfurt Hahn airport

Ryanair will reduce its Hahn-based fleet of aircraft from 11 planes to eight

1,000 staff for 3 B737's?

I'd be making cutbacks aswell! :)

Is Ryanair running out of steam these days? Yesterday in St. Petersburg took place a joint press conference of Ryanair & Lappeenranta Town/Airport.

Main points:
- Over 60% of all pax flying from LPP are Russians, great potential
- good load factors on the LPP-NRN route
- Ryanair has been "extremely satisfied" with the development (as usually) and wants to challenge the position of LED Pulkovo Airport. How? By starting "one or two" new routes from LPP next year.
Well, sure, a true challenge indeed. :hmm:

Meanwhile, the Lappeenranta Airport is also negotiating with both Wizz Air and easyJet (and expanding its parking area). While I do not believe U2 would decide to come, Wizz could. If so, as the Russian press commented, "the Irish may be late". Hmm, not only in Lappeenranta, it seems.

With my poor knowledge of Russian I've compiled just two sources, the better is probably this one.

Did the other German bases survive cuts?

I'm not involved directly in the industry but I have seen no evidence of FR being in commercial difficulty,at least relative to the whole trade,and from a passenger point of view think it's great we now have an airline with the clout to influence pricing policies at airports and even governments.After all,we pay airlines for our travel and those outside the industry have no interest in the latter two hiking our costs.
I'm quite sure "No RYR for ME" is correct that this is exactly what he suggests,a form of punishment.Interestingly,the three airports he mentions are all in crisis in terms of route/passenger losses,and two have made massive capital investments which are now under-utilised.
Those who await a backdown may be disappointed when it doesn't come from the airline.

According to the media reports Crawley today only said that there will be cuts at other German airports as well, but that he did not go into detail. BRE and NRN were mentioned as airport with ongoing negotiations. Last week he said that there will be cuts in Germany, but mostly at HHN and less so at the other bases.

Realistically, HHN has been under pressure ever since NRN became a base. NRN simply has the better catchment area and for many people in the Rhine-Ruhr area who used HHN in the past NRN has become the more attractive alternative.

Same old same old. He only works in round 500's or 1,000's. In Dublin there were going to be how many jobs created with his move to Hangar 6? Then how many were "lost" to Prestwick when the DAA and Irish government didn't open up the cheque book for him. No doubt the dole queues in Scotland have now emptied with his massive investment.

Ah what purchasing power? Now lets see he flies EI registered aircraft, has crews paid through intermediary agencies who will themselves be paying tax (if at all) in some other jurisdiction, his company pays naff all in corporate tax due to taking advantage of accelerated depreciation on his Boeing orders.

His "purchasing power" certainly had Airbus racing to sign up his business during the summer didn't it? Or maybe not.

CRL base grow very fast the past months/years. Also a reason why HHN is under pressure.

My understanding is that both B and A had already mutually assured one another that they wouldn't be put over a barrel by MOL.

I don't think the German Govt could give a t**s about that. What will be of interest is which other carriers will pick up the routes.

FR is cancelling routes [even] in Spain. At a very short notice will end the STN - Ciudad Real route (from November 11). The reason: the airport manager CR Airports' failure to fulfill the trade agreements (to pay for flying presumably, or whatever it means). Also Santiago de Compostela will not get back its routes. Galician Air Route Committee has held an emergency meeting today in order to re-consider the allocation of its "sponsorship" funds, but Ryanair representative invited to take part in these consultations simply did not appear.

Pee: you know this part of the world well so please excuse my naive question: if Ryanair attacked LED head-on by opening 20 routes out of LPP, is there any danger that they would suddenly face "obstacles" in the form of unpredictable long passport-control checks for Russians crossing the border to travel to LPP, for example ;) ? Who owns LED? The city government?

C.

LED is owned by Fraport and the city government.

I thought that when RYR decided to pull out of hanger 6 at Dublin and move it's maintenance elsewhere MOL trumpeted that HHN would be the beneficiary. Is it not also the case that they did, or were going to, pump many euros into a new terminal at HHN? What about plans for it to become a central Europe training centre with sims, cabin crew training etc? I thought there was more to HHN's future with RYR than just 11 a/c flitting in & out. What has happened to all those plans? More toys out of the pram.

All plans have being put on hold. I think that they will come back to Dublin or London.

Unlikely any of these routes were sustainable in the long term. You can't create endless demand with just low air fares. Even if the flights were free business travellers need to have a reason to fly and leisure travellers incur other costs aside from the air fare so there is a finite limit to market sizes. Looks like the penny is beginning to drop with FR! Taxes are just an excuse.

Doors - you may well have a point. During 2009, there were multiple "fly for 1 penny" offers. I bought the tickets, but come the day of the flight, I sometimes decided at the crack of dawn that it just wasn't worth getting out of bed.

Is it time ?
 

Bigger Airports, Connecting flights to New Transatlantic Low Cost Airline based at say BCN, STN, EDI and DUB ...:oh:...

About Fraport I didn´t know, the city government is for sure.

I think that in Russia it's still possible to create obstacles to anything if you have the "connections" good enough to get someone high-ranked on your side.
So far no signs of it. The journalists at the press conference asked if there are many pax late due to the border control; "the coaches are on time, sometimes a couple of people (travelling by private car) arrive late, not even every day".

There are also plans to create the daily direct train from St. Petersburg to Lappeenranta (trains do not have to wait) and a bus connection from the border train station to bring pax from St. Petersburg - Helsinki express to Lappeenranta (this "Allegro" high speed train's frequency will be raised to four daily by next summer).
Trains, however, are much more expensive than the airport coaches.

Interestingly then at the moment the tax in Gemany only seems to have hurt Hahn is it not applicable at other German airports. Surely this isnt just a ploy by FR to cut back at Hahn and blame someone else? Heaven forbid.