Ryanair fulfills ultimatum, cancelling 19 Lisbon summer routes

After a third and final appeal to the Portuguese Prime Minister to release ‘slots’ not used by TAP, Ryanair announced yesterday that it will proceed with the reduction of the fleet at Lisbon airport this summer, “since the Portuguese Government has not acted” to free TAP ‘slots’, resulting in the cancellation of 19 routes at Lisbon airport.

In a statement, the Irish airline said that, “since the Portuguese Government did not act”, it was forced to reduce the number of aircraft based in Lisbon, from seven to four, for summer 2022, causing the cancellation of 5,000 flights, 900,000 passengers and 19 routes from Lisbon for this summer.

Ryanair also added that those cancellations will lead to the “loss of 150 well-paid jobs” at Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado airport.

“We regret this unnecessary inconvenience for all passengers on these cancelled flights, and the loss of 19 routes due to the blocking of unused slots by TAP in the summer of 2020, in Lisbon”, said the executive president, Michael O’Leary.

The low-cost airline has twice appealed to the Prime Minister, António Costa, for the release of slots not used by TAP, indicating that, if this did not happen, Ryanair would have to cancel routes.

“Our latest efforts to ask the Prime Minister, António Costa, for help resulted in a total of zero responses,” reads the statement from Ryanair sent today.

However, Ryanair said that the three aircraft and the 19 missed routes will return to Lisbon in October 2022, for the winter schedule, “since it has enough ‘slots’ in the winter” for those flights.