The traffic grows, the map shrinks. In September Ryanair carried over 20.1 million passengers, 4% more than a year ago, with planes 94% full on average. Yet, between 2026 and spring 2027 the Irish company will have abandoned thirteen airports in eight countries. This is shown by the timetables that the carrier transmits to OAG, a company that collects airline calendars, in an analysis published by the specialized site Bolt Flight.
From Galicia to the Aegean, the calendar of cuts
The first to disappear was Vigo, in January, after the tug-of-war with Aena over airport charges which had already pushed Ryanair to cut winter seats in regional Spanish airports by 41%. In March it was the turn of Asturias, Clermont-Ferrand, the Azores (Ponta Delgada and Terceira) and Amman, where the company had built eighteen routes and where flights had already been stopped since the beginning of the year due to the war. Rodez closed in August. This month the list gets longer with Bodrum and Dalaman in Türkiye, Kalamata and Volos in Greece, Niš in Serbia.
Bremen, last on the list
The latest release concerns Bremen. With a press release dated 8 October, Ryanair announced the stop to all flights to and from the German airport from April 2027, with the loss of 500 thousand seats per year. Commercial director Jason McGuinness takes issue with airport charges, the German air transport tax and the costs of security and traffic control. The cut also affects Italy, given that among the six destinations served by Bremen there is Lamezia Terme, a bi-weekly connection which debuts on 25 October and which, barring second thoughts, will last just five months. The last flight from Bremen is scheduled for March 27, 2027. The other routes are Alicante, Malaga, Palma de Mallorca, Zadar and London Stansted.
In Bremen they tell it another way. Economy senator Kristina Vogt accuses the company of demanding the airport services almost free of charge. Councilor Kai Stührenberg instead explained to Radio Bremen that the requested discounts, of up to 5 euros per passenger paid by the airport, were neither sustainable nor compatible with EU rules on state aid. At stake are around 400 thousand passengers and 3 million euros in annual revenues for an airport already in serious financial difficulty.
The script
The abandoned routes were not necessarily loss-making, they were less profitable than others. It is the same logic that last September pushed Ryanair to cut winter flights, in that case due to expensive kerosene, here due to taxes and tariffs. The company moves planes where margins are highest and lets the void speak for it. Works? She returned to Bergerac for the summer of 2026 after negotiations with the local authorities, while in Bremen, to date, there seems to be no glimmer of hope whatsoever.
