Ryanair Switches Strasbourg Route to Germany
August 27, 2003Ryanair is to suspend flights to Strasbourg next month and switch its twice daily Stansted-to-Strasbourg service to Baden Baden, 40 kilometres away in Germany. The route is the first casualty of a battle over "unfair" subsidies provided to the Irish airline by publicly owned continental airports. The decision to divert the route to Germany, which will come into effect on September 24, follows Ryanair’s defeat in the French courts, which judged that Strasbourg's airport had improperly used public funds by providing the budget carrier with €1.4m of incentives to operate the route. The European Commission will also rule later this year whether a deal between Ryanair and Brussels' Charleroi airport constitutes another unfair government subsidy.