Ryanair cuts 20% of its flights at Warsaw Modlin airport, including to Charleroi

Ryanair has announced significant cuts to its winter flight schedule from Warsaw-Modlin airport. They are cancelling 10 routes and reducing frequencies on 13 others (including to Brussels South Charleroi), resulting in a 20 percent reduction in the winter 2023/2024 flight schedule. This decision has been attributed to an “avoiding agreement” by the management of Warsaw-Modlin airport, according to Ryanair.

Routes to Belfast, Bristol, Cologne, Kaunas, Manchester, and Pisa will be cancelled, and frequencies on key city routes to London, Stockholm, Dublin, Vienna, Milan, Paris, and Brussels South will be reduced. Ryanair CEO Eddie Wilson expressed concerns about the impact on 200 jobs and mentioned that this situation could have been avoided if the airport management had agreed to a long-term development agreement with Ryanair.

Ryanair claimed that it had proposed several development plans that could have doubled passenger traffic at Modlin and brought transformative growth to the region, but the airport management consistently rejected these proposals. Despite these cuts, Ryanair will continue to operate over 290 flights a week to/from Warsaw-Modlin airport.

On a positive note, Ryanair announced that Warsaw Chopin, Lublin, and Lódz airports will receive more routes and flights for the winter 2023/2024, including a new route from Warsaw Chopin to Manchester.

The management of Mazowiecki Port Lotniczy Warszawa-Modlin, which oversees the airport, declined to comment on Ryanair’s press release but expressed confidence in working out cooperation rules that benefit both parties.

Ryanair remains the most popular airline in Poland, according to recent data, serving over 3.1 million passengers in the first quarter of the year, followed by LOT Polish Airlines and Wizz Air. Warsaw-Modlin airport served 651,457 passengers in the same period.