The European Commission has found an unlikely wingman — Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary.
Normally O’Leary lambastes the Commission in salty language for hampering competition; the Irish carrier has spent much of the last two years sparring in court with the EU executive over approving pandemic bailouts for many legacy airlines hit hard by the coronavirus, which Ryanair argues unfairly penalized carriers that did a better job of coping with the downturn.
But now Ryanair and Brussels have become allies against the effort by big carriers like Lufthansa to argue for a further softening of the EU’s rules on slots — the lucrative permissions to take off and land at airports.
“We wanted to give the Commission a bit of support,” O’Leary said in a call with POLITICO.
Lufthansa argues that Brussels’ rules are forcing it to put on thousands of near-empty flights — dubbed “ghost flights” — in order to not lose slots. Under the so-called “use it or lose it” rule, airlines are required to fly a route 50 percent of the time to retain a slot. That threshold is down from a pre-pandemic 80 percent requirement, modified by the Commission after the collapse in air travel in the early days of the pandemic.
As air travel recovers, the threshold is set to rise to 64 percent at the end of March. But Lufthansa wants the regulation softened instead, with Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr arguing he’ll have to put on 18,000 “unnecessary” flights in January and February to keep its slots, which he said would also have a negative impact on emissions.
That pleading gets short shrift from both O’Leary and the Commission.
The CEO said legacy carriers already got a sweet deal from the EU thanks to approval for pandemic bailouts and softer slot rules.
“And now Lufthansa’s still not happy. They don’t want to operate ghost flights because: ‘Ohhh, the environment,’” he said.
EU Transport Commissioner Adina Vălean has also come out swinging against watering down slot rules, arguing in a letter obtained by POLITICO that the current threshold is fair. The pandemic slot rule changes “provided airlines with all the flexibility they needed for almost two years now, while also ensuring adequate protection for the interests of passengers and airports.”
She also took aim at Lufthansa, pointing out that data from traffic manager Eurocontrol showed that in early January, the airline operated more than 60 percent of flights compared to the same period in 2019. That’s more than the existing rules require for carriers to keep hold of a slot.
“It is difficult to see why Lufthansa would need to operate the claimed 18,000 flights, accounting for only 5 percent of its total flights in the winter scheduling season, to protect their slots portfolio,” she wrote to the European Parliament’s transport committee chair Karima Delli, who had called for changes to the rules in response to Lufthansa’s demands.
The current rules also allow for a “justified non-use exemption,” meaning that if a government imposes new travel restrictions, airlines wouldn’t be required to fly to and from that country to keep hold of their slots.
Lufthansa’s call has also been rejected by the airports’ lobby.
A spokesperson for the German carrier said: “Ryanair and Michael O’Leary are obviously misinformed.” The spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on Vălean’s letter, saying the airline hadn’t seen it, but they did say that changing slot rules could avoid “many thousands of unnecessary flights in Europe.”
The commissioner suggested the German carrier has not helped itself.
“Lufthansa has so far not presented evidence as to where such claimed ‘unnecessary flights’ are generated solely to preserve slots, nor has any other operator,” Vălean wrote.
O’Leary went a bit further.
“The solution is simple: sell the seats. Shut up, stop complaining, and allow at least the taxpayers that bailed you out some benefits by giving them cheap seats,” he said.
Or it could give up those slots and allow another airline to take them over.
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