Yahoo Finance Michael O’Leary accuses Lufthansa of crying ‘crocodile tears’ to win Brussels cash
Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary has accused Germany’s government-backed airline of crying “crocodile tears” in a bid to win more EU state aid.
Lufthansa wants Brussels to continue to relax rules compelling the airline to run a minimum number of flights from popular airports or lose valuable take off and landing slots.
Failure to do so risks the German carrier being forced to operate 18,000 “ghost flights” so that it does not fall foul of “use-it-or-lose-it rules”, it claimed last week.
But Mr O’Leary, whose airline wants to expand across capacity-constrained airports on the Continent, hit back at Lufthansa’s pleas.
“The solution to Lufthansa’s 'ghost flights' problem is a simple one – just sell these seats to consumers,” he said. “If Lufthansa really needs to operate these flights, solely to prevent the release of these slots to competitor airlines, then they should be required to sell these seats to the public at low fares.
“Lufthansa loves crying crocodile tears about the environment when doing everything possible to protect its slots.”
A moratorium on the slots rules was put in place at the start of the pandemic across the UK and EU to avoid airlines incurring unnecessary costs.
The EU is phasing the rules back in, with airlines needing to use half their slots this winter and 64pc over the summer of 2022. The historical utilisation rate of 80pc could be reimposed back at the end of the year.
Brussels officials have signalled support for dropping the waiver completely. Adina Valean, the EU transport commissioner, told the Financial Times: “While we need to remain cautious, it may indicate that the impact of the fourth wave and the omicron variant on air travel may not be as negative and long-lasting as initially feared.”
Mr O’Leary, whose airline toppled Lufthansa as Europe’s biggest at the start of 2020, has regularly clashed with the German carrier, which received billions in state aid to keep it afloat during the pandemic.
“The EU should ignore Lufthansa’s disingenuous claims about ‘ghost flights’,” he said. “Ryanair again calls on the European Commission to force Lufthansa and other state-subsidised airlines to release slots that they do not wish to use.”
A Lufthansa spokesman said it had "never spoken of ghost flights. Here Ryanair and Michael O'Leary are obviously misinformed. We are concerned with a European harmonisation of the exemptions for the use of take-off and landing rights in the current winter flight schedule. This could avoid many thousands of unnecessary flights in Europe".
Meanwhile, the UK can decide on its own roles following Brexit. Grant Shapps, Transport Secretary, is consulting on plans to partially drop the waiver and force airlines to run 70pc of slots his summer. A decision on the rules is expected later this month.
Stewart Wingate, chief executive of Gatwick airport, wrote to Mr Shapps in November, urging him to return the “80/20 rules”.
“Preventing access to slots could also result in airlines allocating their capacity in other markets instead of the UK, which would be to the detriment of UK consumers, potentially for some years to come,” he said.
