Ryanair: received €660 million in subsidies from EU airports

In this morning's Irish Times there is a very informative article entitled The subsidies that keep Ryanair profits airborne

The author was writing about how taxpayers' money is used in some 200 regional EU airports to give Ryanair a competitive advantage in the marketplace; Lufthansa is the latest airline to make complaints about this use of public funds:

"Lufthansa says that if Ryanair was stripped of free or subsidised airport services in addition to cash, in the form of “marketing support”, it would lose money. “If all the airport subsidies and support paid to Ryanair were taken away, its economic situation would be very different,” says the Thomas Kropp, a spokesman for the German airline."

And this:

"French newspapers recently cited figures ranging between €35 million for France alone, and €660 million across the EU, as the value to Ryanair of the subsidies it receives. Until EU investigations into several alleged illegal subsidies are concluded, as well as a case being taken in the European Court by Air France/KLM, only one figure can be relied upon. That is the €35 million of Ryanair subsidies uncovered by audits conducted on several French airports controlled by local authorities. The audits, carried out by France’s cour des comptes (its version of our Comptroller and Auditor General), are representative, say Lufthansa and Air France/KLM, of what Ryanair enjoys at many of Europe’s 200 or so regional airports."

And this:

"In some cases, net subsidies amounted to as much as €32 per passenger carried, as with Rodez, a French airport where Ryanair benefited to the tune of at least €3.2 million between 2004 and 2006 for just three flights per route per week. At Brest, subsidies totalled €23 per passenger. At busier Beauvais (Ryanair’s Paris), the subsidy per passenger between 2001 and 2006 was a more modest €9, but total aid in cash and benefits still amounted to €28.6 million."


Do you think this is hypocritical of Ryanair to be so heavily subsidised by taxpayers when it started life famously raging against state subsidies of airlines such as Aer Lingus as these subsidies created an unfair market?