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Airline Ryanair has been ordered to pay back millions of pounds in illegal subsidies in a landmark European Commission decision.
The decision could mean an end to bargain basement airfares.
The Commission said cut-priced rates offered exclusively to Ryanair for using Charleroi Airport in southern Belgium were illegal.
But the airline will not have to repay all its subsidies from the Belgian regional government. Some of the rebates for Ryanair were permissible as part of regional development support for the airport.
But about

ah well, their own fault really. But then again i wouldnt fly with a budget airline as it is so the whole fare thing not an issue.
I do however see their point about the airport should have been responsible for wheel chairs not the company. I mean what did these people expect from the airline thats charged them

... the Commission said, because it was "incompatible with the proper functioning of the internal market".

Another load of EU B******* really.

Charlie

I was wondering how they go on in the US. I find it hard to believe that even major airlines do not receive some incentive to use certain airports. This would certainly benefit the local area & I see nothing wrong with it. Maybe someone in the know can comment on this.

Beautifully put Charlie
I couldn't have expressed it better myself
Hagar, I can't understand this personally. Flag carriers get subsidised to the ears. I mean look what happened to Swiss!!! And Sabena (Belgium)!!!
And everyone knows that BA, Air France, Lufthansa etc would have got out of business years ago if it wasn't for the poor old taxpayer

yes Ozzy, Sabena got tons of money from our government, but what do you think they did with that money? not much really. they only bought new aircrafts when they were introduced (like the 747, or even the Concorde...Sabena had two options for the last one) and they gave lots of political friends the "nice places" in the Sabena staff...after a while, there were more managers than aircrafts (no joke!).

it totally went wrong when they bouth a new airbus fleet and started working together with Swissair.

now when Sabena doesn't exist anymore and 12 000 employees are sacked, investigators are still investigating the case...probably lots of political scandales will come out within a few years...but hey, we aren't Belgium for nothing!  :-/

about Ryanair...it was unfair they got money from Walloni

boeing did with ryanair what airbus did with tons of other airlines. Fair or not there are pleanty of companies guilty of that, Virgin being one of them

and that's just unfair considering other airlines.

Who said anything about being fair? To my mind this is standard business practice & the airline business is a cut-throat business. You beat your competitors or go under. That's how it works.