Competition Authority drop investigation into Ryanair

The Irish Competition Authority today announced that it was dropping it's investigation into complaints by Aer Arann concerning Ryanair's fare levels on the Dublin - Cork route.

The complaint was lodged 18 months ago by Aer Arann, claiming unfair competition due to the fact that Ryanair's fares were lower. Ryanair in it's defence proved to the Competition Authority that it's fares were profitable and that it was competing with higher priced (ground) based alternatives as opposed to Aer Arann which it saw as a high fares airline.

At the time of the complaint, Aer Arann's CEO Padraig O'Ceidigh had claimed that Ryanair was trying to put his airline out of business.

Responding to today's decision, Ryanair's Stephen McNamara said “Perhaps Aer Arann and Padraig O’Ceidigh will now admit that they can’t compete with Ryanair’s prices, our punctuality, or our passenger numbers. Ryanair would have to substantially increase its prices to compete with Aer Arann, which is a loss making PSO subsidy junkie. The reason why Aer Arann is losing money is not because of the one route (Cork-Dublin) where it tries to compete with Ryanair, but because its costs and fares are too high on the 39 other routes it operates where it doesn’t compete with Ryanair at all”.