Ryanair gets E40m to stay at Spanish airports

Ryanair and the Generalitat of Catalonia have reached a tentative agreement that the Irish low-cost airline will receive around 8m euros each year for the next five years (40m euros in total) in exchange for continuing to operate at the airports of Girona and Reus, according to reports in the Catalan media.

Source Business World (Digest)

Dec. 12, 2011

Specifically, the airline is committed to maintain three million passengers a year in Gerona and a half million in Reus.

Both figures are far from the over seven million passengers carried by Ryanair in 2009, before there was a change of strategy in Catalonia, which has given priority to its operation at the airport of El Prat in Barcelona.

The draft agreement, however, will only be ratified if Aena (the public company that owns both facilities) agrees not to raise rates at these two airports, because otherwise "the draft agreements will be cancelled". The tentative agreement comes just 15 days after Ryanair operated its last flight from Reus airport. In the last year it has cancelled 39 flights from Girona airport which, for the last decade, has been its main base of operations in Spain.