Ryanair’s competitors are ‘squatting on slots’: O’Leary

Ryanair Group CE Michael O’Leary believes that Europe’s legacy carriers will seek to undermine competition and push up fares by holding on to their unused slots into summer 2021 and even 2022. The outspoken airline chief warned that such moves by legacy carriers could prevent capacity returning to the skies when a post-Covid demand recovery materialises next year. “The [legacy carriers] are going to try get slot extensions so that they can squat on their slots, and constrain growth and keep prices high,” says O’Leary. “Unless you have additional capacity into that marketplace to take up the slack that would be left by Norwegian, EasyJet’s cutbacks, then prices will rise.” The EC has suspended normal take-off and landing rules that remove slots from airline if their usage falls below a certain level, on the grounds that forcing carriers to operate flights amid collapsing demand would be financially and environmentally disastrous. O’Leary singles out KLM’s operations at Amsterdam Schipol for particular criticism, calling the facility “artificially constrained”. He sees no reason for a slot limit at the airport. Delays to the opening of a low cost alternative airport are, he speculates, the product of the Dutch government’s wish to “limit KLM’s competition while giving them three and a half to four billion of state aid anyway”. He adds: “That repeats at other airports.”<br/>