🔶 Ryanair is closing its base at Berlin Airport.
The low-cost airline Ryanair has decided to close its base of operations at Berlin Brandenburg Airport, BER, and transfer seven aircraft based at this airport to other countries.
This decision is the latest blow to the airport, which was built with years of delays and cost several times the initial budget, and has not been able to reach profitability since its opening.
The decision to close the Berlin base should have been made a long time ago, says Marcel Potchenmeyer, Ryanair's Germany manager.
According to him, seven planes, whose main base was until now Berlin, will be transferred to other countries, and from now on their night maintenance services will also be carried out outside Germany.
He mentioned Sweden, Italy, Slovakia and Poland as countries where airline operating costs are lower than in Germany.
With the transfer of the planes, pilots and flight attendants who sit in Berlin will also be transferred to other bases. In total, 210 jobs will be lost at this airport.
Closing the Ryanair base does not mean a complete stop of the company's flights to Berlin.
Ryanair aircraft will continue to fly to this airport on several direct routes, but Berlin will no longer be one of the main hubs of the company's fleet.
Under the new plan, Ryanair's annual seat capacity at Berlin Airport will decrease from 4.5 million to 2.2 million.
The number of flights on many of the remaining routes will also be reduced and some of the popular tourist routes, including flights to Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria and Nazroeta, will be completely cancelled.
Ryanair has criticized the high costs of the German airline industry for years.
The company says that since 2019, air transport tax costs and security costs in Germany have doubled and the cost of air traffic control services has also more than tripled. At Berlin Airport, airport charges have increased by 50% and the airport management has announced that a further increase of 10% will apply until 2029.
Ryanair says the sum of these costs has made operating in Berlin economically uncompetitive.
This company generally prefers smaller airports, as the cost of using their infrastructure is lower compared to large airports.