Ryanair has announced it is stopping flights to Bergerac, Brive and Strasbourg this winter, in response to the French government’s decision to raise taxes on airline flight tickets.
Several flights to the UK will be affected. Bergerac currently runs Ryanair flights to Bournemouth, Bristol, East Midlands, Liverpool, Edinburgh, and London Stansted and Brive has Ryanair flights to London Stansted.
Flights to other destinations by the airline from the airports include Morocco, Portugal, Spain and Belgium.
In addition, the company said it will cut the number of seats available this winter to the main airports it services in France, with Marseille seeing a 9% cut, Paris-Beauvais 8%, and Toulouse 4%.
Other French regional airports that have winter services will see a combined 27% cut in seat capacity on Ryanair planes.
25 flight routes are being cut in total
Overall, the airline says the number of seats available for its French services this winter will drop by 13%, with 25 regular flights cut and a total reduction of 750,000 passenger seats.
In a press release Ryanair’s chief commercial officer, Jason McGuinness, said: “While France should be concentrating on regaining growth, Ryanair has no other choice than to reduce its capacity for the winter by 13% because of the failure of the French government to act against this harmful tax on flying – which it increased by 180% earlier this year.
“It is unacceptable that a large European country like France has fallen behind the rest of the EU, with air traffic still below that of before Covid, because of excessive taxes and security costs imposed by the government which make a number of regional French lines unprofitable, especially in winter.”
Ryanair did not respond to questions from The Connexion asking for the dates when the cuts to services to the three airports would start and if it was planning to resume services in the summer of 2026.
It also did not reply when we asked why it did not simply pass on the ticket tax rises to passengers. Many of these are second-home owners or locals rather than tourists.
In France the taxes vary from airport to airport, depending on size.
In 2025 the tax is €11 for passengers from Paris flying inside France and inside the Schengen area, €12.11 for passengers flying to the UK and French overseas departments, and €27.88 for other destinations.
Another airline ticket tax in France is the Taxe de Solidarité sur les Billets d’avion, usually named the Chirac tax after the president who introduced it with the initial promise that the money raised would be used to buy medicines for poor people in poor countries.
This is now €7.40 for flights in France and Europe in economy class and €15 for other flights in economy class, rising to €40 for long-haul flights.
Other European countries including the UK also apply airline ticket taxes – in Germany this starts from €15 per passenger whilst in the UK the lowest ticket passenger tax is £7.
There have been industry fears that the French tax will be increased further in the 2026 budget – however outline plans for this have so far excluded that.
Bergerac airport says it learnt of the Ryanair decision at the same time as the press
Bergerac airport told The Connexion that it had learnt of the Ryanair decision at the same time as the press, and it was preparing a communique for later in the day, after they had more details.
“In any event we will not be as impacted as we might have been, because the airport will be closed in January and February this year while the runway is resurfaced,” a spokesman told The Connexion.
No-one was available to comment at Brive or Strasbourg airports.
Ryanair had a huge impact on French air travel when it first started flying to France in the 1990s, being the first ‘low cost’ airline to successfully establish itself in the country.
Its flights to regional airports such as Limoges and Bergerac had an impact on property markets and tourism, as people in the UK realised that they could travel to the area in a couple of hours rather than having a channel crossing and a drive which could take most of a day.
But the airline's methods of working with regional airports have raised questions, especially the use of contracts where the airports pay the airline for various marketing services. This has caused problems in France and other EU countries.
A judicial investigation into such contracts aimed at airport officials is continuing in Limoges.
In 2024 Ryanair was ordered to repay €14 million which the EU judged had been wrongly granted to it by the airport of Frankfurt-Hahn in Germany, and in 2019 the company was ordered to pay back €8.5 million paid to it for promotion by Montpellier Airport.
Another high-profile spat occurred in 2010 when the then president of Charente department, Michel Boutant, accused the company of “blackmail” when he said it asked for a €175,000 contribution which Mr Boutant said was not in the initial contract.
Ryanair, which had been flying to Angoulême airport since 2008, and had already received €1 million in contributions from the department, stopped using the airport as a result.
It was ordered by a court in Poitiers in 2020 to pay a total of €512,000 to the department as a result of breaking the contract to use Angoulême airport. The airport’s runway had previously been lengthened so that aircraft like the Boeing 737s used by Ryanair could use it easily.
Last year Ryanair pulled out of Bordeaux airport after a row over fees, and the airport said that the number of passengers using the airport had dropped by 13% as a result.
Earlier this month Ryanair called for greater protections against disruption from air traffic controller strikes in France.
Strike action earlier this month in the sector caused widespread chaos.
A major strike by French airline traffic controllers on July 3 and 4 cost airlines an estimated €115 million as 3,000 flights in Europe were cancelled and over 7,000 delayed.
Over 20% of all affected flights were operated by Ryanair.
It has therefore reiterated calls to the EU to protect ‘overflights’ – routes going over French airspace but not landing in the country itself – from cancellations or delays during strike action.
