Ryanair seems to have a difficult end of year. In three main European countries, complaints against the airline has increased.

In France, Ryanair is in trouble with several secondary airports as Poitiers or Angouleme. In these two cases, Ryanair is trying to ask more money to continue its operation. Local politic responsable quickly reacted. Michel Boutant, a local responsible, has called for the creation of a common front against Ryanair. His goal is to gather several airports in order to be stronger against Ryanair. He believes that if airports speak as one, they will have more power to negotiate. The story grabbed the headlines of many local French newspapers before than the national economic French newspaper Les Echos also headlined the case.

In Italy, a different case has created new difficulties for Ryanair. In fact, the Italian civil aviation authority (ENAC) decided to impose new rules on ID documents that passengers can show at airport gates. It ordered airlines to accept driving licenses, government badges, fishing and hunting licenses and other documents to identify passengers at boarding gates for domestic flights. These new rules will affect Ryanair safety rule process. This mainly explains why the company decided to suspend temporally its Italian domestic flights from 23 January. According to me, Ryanair is not as concern as it pretends to be about safety issues. I remember that channel four’s “Ryanair Caught Napping” perfectly showed that safety issues are not a primary concern for Ryanair. So why the Irish budget airline would decide to stop its Italian domestic routes? According to me, a new safety rule would be partly damageable for Ryanair’s business model and could increase its cost. I think behind Ryanair’s official excuse of not accepting “to lower its safety standards and put at risk the lives of its passengers” this is all about Ryanair’s research of cost efficiency.

Last month, Ryanair was also under fire in Spain. Indeed, Spanish pilots complain about Ryanair fuel saving practices. According to several allegations by Spanish aviation professionals, Ryanair commonly refuels its aircrafts with the minimum amount of kerosene needed. Ryanair, by reducing its carried amount of fuel, spends less money and reduces its consumption. However, by European standards of aviation safety, all passenger aircraft must load more fuel than needed, to be able to fly an extra 30 and 45 minutes to be able to reach, in case of emergency or necessity, the next closest airport. However, Spanish aviation professional mentioned several Ryanair’s landing irregularities.