The Competition Commission has been urged by Ryanair to end “interminable delays” and judicial reviews over the sale of Stansted by BAA.
The call came from the no-frills carrier’s chief executive Michael O’Leary as he reported a 20% rise in half year profits to €544 million. O’Leary said the competition watchdog must “expedite the early sale of Stansted to allow competition to deliver lower costs, and improved customer service”.
His comments follow BAA agreeing to sell Edinburgh airport but seeking a judicial review over demands to also divest itself of Stansted.
“We regret the decision of the Ferrovial/BAA monopoly to further delay the sale of Stansted – and instead bring forward the sale of Edinburgh – to comply with the UK Competition Commission’s 2009 break-up recommendation,” O’Leary said.
“While the Competition Appeals Tribunal considers this pointless judicial review, these delays allow BAA Stansted to continue to charge excessive fees and generate monopoly profits, even as Stansted’s traffic declines from 24 million passengers in 2007 to less than 18 million in 2011.”
He was speaking as Ryanair revealed that ancillary sales rose 15% to €487 million, slightly faster than traffic growth in the first half. Passengers carried grew by 12% to 44.7 million in the six months to September, with revenues up by 24% to €2.7 billion as fares rose by 13%.
“The recession and higher oil prices continues to force competitors to consolidate, and cut capacity and routes, which creates further growth opportunities for Ryanair as European airports compete aggressively to win our route and traffic growth,” O’Leary said, announcing plans to open a 48th base at Warsaw (Modlin).
He described last week’s provisional agreement to allow British Airways parent International Airlines Group to buy BMI from Lufthansa as an “expected development in the continuing consolidation process among Europe’s high fare airlines”.
“The fact that IAG/BA will control over 60% of the short haul slots at Heathrow will mirror Lufthansa’s 60% share of Frankfurt slots and Air France’s 60% share of Charles de Gaulle slots. We believe this takeover will be rubber stamped in due course by both the EU and UK competition authorities.
“This will highlight, yet again, the EU’s blatantly discriminatory prohibition on Ryanair’s failed 2006 offer for Aer Lingus and the UK OFT’s more recent unjustified, and in our view out of time, investigation into a five year old failed merger between two Irish companies.
“This OFT wild goose chase and waste of public funds continues despite the fact that Aer Lingus has repeatedly ignored Ryanair’s 29% shareholding including denying our lawful EGM requests over the last five years.
“The reality is that all the evidence over the past five years points to the fact that – as the EU previously found – Ryanair has no control or influence over Aer Lingus.”