Ryanair announced today that it will reduce its Summer 2026 schedule to Regional Spain by 1.2m seats (-10%). The low-cost will also stop all flights to/from Asturias Airport, as the Aena Monopoly continues to raise its uncompetitive airport fees at Spanish (mostly empty) regional airports. These regrettable cuts follow Ryanair’s 1m seat cuts to Regional Spain for Winter 2025, and are a direct result of the Spanish Govt’s failure to stop Aena’s monopoly fee increases, particularly at under-used Regional airports, and its failure to reverse Minister Bustinduy’s illegal bag fines, despite promising to do so. While Minister Bustinduy continues to illegally interfere in the pricing of low-fare airlines (in breach of EU law), he refuses to take any action against overcharging by a number of Spanish OTAs (online travel agencies) who continue to overcharge and harm unsuspecting Spanish consumers.

The Spanish Govt is the majority shareholder in the Aena Airport Monopoly and has appointed an ex-politician (Maurici Lucena) to run it. Despite this control, the Aena Monopoly continues to raise fees at Spain Regional Airports, making them uncompetitive and harming growth. Aena’s monopoly approach to pricing is that small underused Regional airports should charge similar rates as busy main airports like Madrid, Barcelona, Palma and Malaga. As a result, Ryanair is switching seat capacity to these bigger Spanish airports (where passenger demand and air fares are higher). When faced with high fees at Regional airports, Ryanair has moved to lower cost airports elsewhere in Morocco, Italy, Croatia, Albania, and Sweden, where Govts are abolishing Enviro Taxes and lowering Airport fees.

The Irish low-cost submitted two growth plans — including for some of the airports we are now closing — to Aena and the Spanish Government. These plans would have increased traffic by 40% by 2030, reaching 77 million passengers per year. However, the Spanish Government chose to ignore the proposals, raise airport charges, and sacrifice potential growth and job creation.

Regional Spain can grow, but it needs a Govt committed to stimulating growth by lowering the cost of air travel to/from the Regions of Spain, and a Consumer Minister who actually protects consumers by ending OTA overcharging, while respecting both EU law, and precedent ECJ Court Rulings (the Vueling Case 2014), which clearly prevent national Govts from interfering in the way airlines price seats, or carry-on bags.