Ryanair Withdraws From Stansted Sale Process, As Ferrovial Refuses To Engage With Ryanair
09-Oct-2012 Ryanair, Stansted's largest airline (with almost 70% of Stansted's traffic), today (9 Oct) announced that it had withdrawn from the Stansted sale process, having been advised by BAA Stansted's owner, Ferrovial, that it will exclude Ryanair (and any Ryanair related consortium) from the Stansted sale process.
Since Ryanair does not wish to prejudice other potential investors in Stansted, it has written to all investors/consortia it has held discussions with to advise them that Ryanair will not participate in the sale process or seek a minority stake.
Ryanair will continue to explore the rapid traffic growth opportunities it believes are available at Stansted, if and when the new owner of Stansted reverses the doubling of prices which the BAA/Ferrovial monopoly imposed on Stansted's airlines and passengers in 2007, which has resulted in a 25% traffic decline at Stansted from 23.8m pax in 2007, to just 18m pax in 2011.
Ryanair's Stephen McNamara said:
"We regret Ferrovial's decision to exclude Ryanair from the Stansted sale process and the failure of the Competition Commission to restrain this anti-competitive and anti-customer behaviour by Ferrovial.
While we fully accept that Ferrovial is entirely free not to sell to Ryanair, we fail to understand how it can comply with competition law if Stansted's biggest customer, accounting for 70% of the traffic, is excluded from this sale process.
This year's continuing traffic decline underlines the extraordinary damage done to Stansted airlines and passengers by the Ferrovial/BAA airport monopoly and we look forward to discussing cost reductions and traffic growth with the new owners of Stansted when it is finally sold.
The only way Stansted's traffic decline can be reversed is if its uncompetitive charges are significantly reduced, initially by reversing the disastrous 100% price increase imposed by the BAA monopoly at Stansted in 2007."