Budget airline halts Pau flights

JUST weeks after bosses at Pau airport rejected Ryanair’s demand for extra “marketing” fees, the Irish budget airline has said it is stopping flights from Pau to Stansted, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Brussels Charleroi.

It is switching the services to Lourdes, Biarritz and Béziers.

However, Pau is still keeping its links with London as CityJet is starting a new service on April 1 to London City Airport, which is 30 minutes from the centre of the capital.

Ryanair had demanded a rise in marketing payments at Pau from €1.44m to €1.5m. Airport managers at the Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie said the increase was "intolerable" and "financial blackmail".

Now, from mid-April, the low-cost airline will start a new service from Lourdes to Stansted, from Biarritz to Charleroi and from Béziers to Paris Beauvais.

It said in a press release that it was “disappointed that the managers of Pau Airport prefer to waste their money on CityJet services that fail rather than assuring the growing success of low-cost fares from Pau.

“Ryanair is closing its three services from Pau and is transferring them, along with their 120,000 high-spending passengers and 120 jobs, to neighbouring airports.”

It added that passengers who had booked flights after the services stop on March 27 will be reimbursed or have their flights transferred to the new airports.

Bosses at Pau had moved to secure CityJet flights to London – it already flies from the airport to Paris Orly, Charles de Gaulle and Lyon – to avoid a repeat of the problems at Angoulême Airport, which also lost UK services after refusing to pay Ryanair’s marketing fees but was unable to find a replacement airline.

Photo: Scot w 9