Lhe low-cost airline Ryanair will no longer serve the cities of Dortmund, Dresden and Leipzig in Germany next year, it announced on Thursday. It will also reduce its connections to Hamburg by 60% and to the capital Berlin by 20%. At issue: a dispute with the German government over an increase in taxes, which would make flights in Germany more expensive than elsewhere, Ryanair justifies.
According to the Irish company, the number of passengers in Germany will drop by 12% next summer due to this measure. This represents a reduction of 1.8 million seats.
Ryanair believes that increasing air taxes, as well as increasing costs for security and air traffic control, are unsustainable. The company is calling on the government to immediately scrap air taxes, reduce air traffic control costs and postpone increases in security fees.
Ryanair currently offers flights from Brussels National Airport to Berlin. We do not know if they will be maintained next year.
German airline Lufthansa, parent company of Belgian airline Brussels Airlines, has also expressed concerns about rising costs in Germany. The low-cost airline EasyJet has, for its part, already reduced its offer in Germany.