Ryanair on war path with Lisbon over Morocco flights

Ryanair (FR, Dublin Int’l) has accused the Portuguese Ministry of Infrastructure and the country’s civil aviation authority (Autoridade Nacional da Aviação Civil – ANAC) of blocking it from opening three new routes from Lison to Morocco, but the regulator said the airline had failed to meet deadlines and legal requirements.

The routes and flights affected are Lisbon to Agadir on October 31, November 1, 3, and 5; Lisbon to Fes on October 31 and November 4; and Lisbon to Marrakech on November 1 and 4. Flights from Porto to Marrakech would operate as scheduled.

Portuguese news agency Lusa cited an ANAC spokesperson as saying that Ryanair had not submitted all documents required in time despite several requests from the regulator. “It would be illegal to grant the authorisation in violation of the prevailing law,” the spokesperson said, adding that ANAC would “protect, indemnify and/or compensate” affected passengers as applicable.

“Ryanair already has traffic rights to fly from Portugal to Morocco, successfully operating flights between Portugal and Morocco for over three years and there is no good reason for this unlawful action, which is a clear breach of European Union law, on the operation of the EU Open Skies agreement,” Ryanair’s commercial director, Jason McGuinness, said in a statement. He said more than 3,000 passengers were affected by the cancellation of the flights on the routes from October 31.

The airline said it had repeatedly tried to secure permission for the routes over the past month, “but the faceless bureaucrats from the Ministry of Infrastructure all departed for their holiday break on Friday evening, refusing to issue the routine permissions, demonstrating total indifference to the chaos they have caused to over 3,000 Portuguese passengers whose travel plans to Morocco on the busiest weekend of the year are now in tatters”.

Ryanair has repeatedly been on a war path with Lisbon over its protection of flag carrier TAP Air Portugal (TP, Lisbon). In the latest tiff, the airline has accusing TAP of hoarding unused airport slots at Lisbon Portela Airport, preventing Ryanair from obtaining sufficient slots and resulting in the cancellation of 700 flights and three Lisbon routes to Tours (France), Oujda (Morocco), and Bari (Italy) this winter. It has called on the Portuguese government and the European Commission to intervene.