Ryanair and easyJet trigger price war at UK airports

Regional airports in the United Kingdom are fighting to retain traffic during the oncoming winter season even as dominant low fare carriers, like Ryanair and easyJet, haggle with them over prices in return for their patronage. Ryanair has just announced its decision to end nine of its ten Manchester-based routes to the Continent in a row over charges.

Ryanair said it would end nine of its ten Manchester-based routes after the airport refused to cut its charges sufficiently. The routes affected are Manchester to Barcelona (Girona), Bremen, Brussels (Charleroi), Cagliari, Düsseldorf (Weeze), Frankfurt (Hahn), Marseille, Milan (Bergamo) and Shannon.

Ryanair clarified it had asked Manchester to cut landing charges ''to reflect the lower fares being paid by passengers in the current recession.'' In turn, the airport clarified it had offered charges as low as £3 a passenger, which was rejected by Ryanair.

The Dublin-headquartered carrier will now halt 44 flights a week through Manchester from the start of October. This would mean a loss of about 600,000 passengers a year for the airport.

Manchester is Britain's fourth-busiest airport, at 20 million passengers a year.

Affected passengers shall be offered a full refund or alternative flights from East Midlands, Leeds Bradford or Liverpool airports.