Europe’s biggest budget airline, Ryanair, has angrily pulled out of the UK Aviation Council – saying the body had achieved “zero action and zero progress” since beginning to meet in February.
In a letter to Baroness Vere, the aviation minister and co-chair of the council, the airline’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, called the meetings “a complete waste of our time”.
The Aviation Council was set up by the former transport secretary, Grant Shapps, “to ensure that the UK retains one of the strongest and most successful aviation sectors in the world”.
Its aim is to bring together industry and government “to support the delivery and implementation of commitments set out in the Flightpath to the Future” – itself a described as a “strategic framework for the aviation sector that supports the Department for Transport’s vision for a modern, innovative and efficient sector over the next 10 years”.
Ryanair is an Irish airline but its biggest market is in the UK, with London Stansted as its leading base.
But in a scathing open letter to Baroness Vere, Mr O’Leary said “Ryanair has an airline to run” and abruptly withdrew from the council.
He wrote: “During the first the meetings of your Aviation Council, you have delivered zero action and no practical measures.”
The Ryanair boss cited proposals that Ryanair had made at the first meeting five months ago on:
- Air-traffic control – more staff and airspace reform
- Improved UK Border processing times
- Reducing UK visa costs by one-third
- Easing ID requirements at UK airports to ease pressure on staffing
After the meeting on Tuesday 11 July, Michael O’Leary wrote: “Regrettably, you reported zero action and zero progress on any of these ‘practical measures’ at today’s meeting.”
Part of the meeting was spent discussing airspace modernisation, but the Ryanair chief executive said the proposals “will deliver no immediate or meaningful reform of the London airspace system, which is inefficient, expensive and imposes chronic delays on airlines and our passengers”.
The letter condemned what Mr O’Leary called “your lamentable absence of any action on any of the practical measures proposed by the airlines to improve aviation”.
It ended: “We hereby confirm our resignation from this useless Council. We will not participate in any further meetings of this…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at The Independent Travel…