Ryanair cuts capacity in Spain after airport fee hike in move operator calls 'blackmail'

MADRID (Reuters) -Irish airline Ryanair said on Wednesday it was cutting its passenger capacity in Spain for next winter by 1 million seats in response to what it called a "shameless" fee hike announced by the airport operator Aena.

Aena's CEO Maurici Lucena responded by accusing Ryanair of "self-righteousness", "rudeness", "blackmail" and greed, as the long-running conflict between the largest airline in Spain by passenger numbers and the operator of most of the country's commercial airports escalated.

Ryanair said in a statement the 6.5% fee increase announced by Aena for 2026 made some regional routes unviable.

"The monopoly airport operator has no interest in developing traffic at Spanish regional airports, and simply wants to focus on extracting record profits from Spain's major airports," said Eddie Wilson, CEO of the company's Ryanair DAC unit.

The Irish low-cost carrier said it would cut capacity in regional airports in the peninsula by 600,000 seats and in the Canary Islands by 400,000 seats between late October and late March. That represents 16% of its traffic at regional airports.

The airline said that since Ryanair operates a majority of the flights at several small regional airports in Spain, the cuts will lead to the closure of the Valladolid and Jerez airports.

Lucena said the slots the airline has already booked at the regional airports in that period have a higher capacity than Ryanair claimed.

Aena said its price increase was justified with "solid microeconomic principles", and is much smaller than the increase Ryanair has charged on its plane tickets.

Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz said on Wednesday she will request a meeting with Ryanair's chairman. "I can guarantee the response will be to enforce labour laws," she told reporters.

Ryanair had already said in January it was cutting 800,000 passenger seats through the country's regional airports during the summer season.

Despite the capacity reduction in Spain, Ryanair intends to fly at least 3% more passengers overall in the year ending March 31, 2026.

It will redeploy part of the winter capacity to cheaper airports in countries such as Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Morocco and Sweden, it said.

(Reporting by Marta Serafinko in Gdansk; Editing by Inti Landauro and Jan Harvey)