Ryanair punishes Denmark over ‘harmful’ new tax by scrapping flights to major airports

Ryanair has announced it is axing all flights to and from Aalborg Airport in Denmark from the end of March. It means the country will lose 1.7 million seats and 32 routes for the summer, the budget airline said.

Ryanair has also confirmed it will close its base at Billund, another destination in Denmark, where it has two aircraft.

The budget carrier flies to both Aalborg and Billund, the latter the home of Legoland, from London Stansted airport. It operates direct routes to Billund from Edinburgh and Manchester, too.

The move comes “in response to the [Danish] government’s short-sighted decision to introduce an aviation tax of up to DKK 50 [€6.70] per departing passenger from Jan 2025, coupled with Billund’s failure to agree a competitive long-term agreement”, the airline said in a press release.

Denmark has ‘bizarrely’ introduced an aviation tax

Ryanair has blamed its exit from the Danish airports on the government having “bizarrely introduced an aviation tax”.

The airline says this will damage Denmark’s connectivity, tourism jobs and economy by making the country and its regional airports “hopelessly uncompetitive” compared to other EU countries.

It cites countries including Sweden, Italy, and Hungary that are instead abolishing their aviation taxes to stimulate traffic recovery and growth.

What are aviation taxes and what are they used for?

Denmark’s new air passenger tax will be a fee that travellers will pay in addition to other taxes when booking a flight.

Governments add them to encourage flyers to consider the environmental impact of their travel choices and discourage unnecessary air travel.

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However, as collecting these taxes is the responsibility of airlines, who charge them to customers as part of their ticket, some carriers are concerned about putting off passengers, hence why Ryanair has called Denmark’s tax “anti-growth”.

But environmental campaigners say that air passenger duty taxes could go much further to discourage flying.

Hannah Lawrence at Stay Grounded, a network to counter aviation, told Euronews, “Measures to stop the growth of air traffic are exactly what we need.”

“We need to see effective policies implemented across Europe that fairly reduce air traffic, such as the implementation of a Frequent Flying Levy. [This] would reduce emissions by reducing excessive flights for wealthy passengers.”