Ryanair to cut 200 jobs at Dublin airport

Ryanair is to cut 200 jobs based at Dublin Airport, it said today, blaming the move on “third rate facilities” at the airport, rising Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) charges and the Government’s pending imposition of a €10 departure tax.

Ryanair said today it is to cut back its summer schedule, trim its Dublin fleet from 22 to 18 aircraft and shed 200 pilots, cabin crew and engineers. It predicted Dublin traffic will fall by 20 per cent from 10.8 million passengers to 8.7 million over the next year. The airline said it will announce further cuts in its Dublin winter schedule later.

Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary told a news conference in Dublin the company would also be seeking pay cuts of up to 10 per cent among staff.

Mr O'Leary said monthly passengers numbers at Dublin Airport have fallen by nine per cent, or 150,000, over last year. He said the numbers will further decline when the “idiotic” €10 tax is introduced on March 30th and called for it to be reversed.

“This travel tax has already failed in the UK and Dutch markets, where they caused traffic declines and sadly the Irish Government’s tourist tax is doomed to a similar failure,” Mr O’Leary said. This Government must realise you can only promote tourism by welcoming visitors, not taxing them.”

He claimed the collapse of Irish tourist numbers will “add more weight to the growing calls for the break up of the DAA monopoly, the dismissal of the useless Irish Aviation Regulator and further evidence, if it were needed, that the Department of Transport’s sole policy continues to be the protection of its high cost, inefficient semi-state monopolies at the expense of Irish consumers and visitors.”

The DAA confirmed that passenger numbers have fallen in recent months. However, it said the airport performed better than the European average last year with passenger numbers up by one per cent to 23.5 million.

"The DAA is always disappointed when an airline customer decides to reduce its operations from one of its airports," a DAA spokeswoman said.

Fine Gael’s tourism spokeswoman Olivia Mitchell said Ryanair’s move was further proof the departure levy was an “utter disaster”.

Ryanair announced earlier this month it will 100 jobs at Shannon Airport. Mr O'Leary blamed the “insane and suicidal” departure tax for “devastating forward bookings at Shannon”. The knock-on effect could see the loss of another 700 support staff, he added.

The airline will also axe five routes from Shannon and reduce its number of aircraft there from six to four from the end of March.

Ryanair had a net loss of €118.8 million in the fiscal third quarter, which ended on December 31st.