Originally Posted by
Arturito
Not only low but Ryanair got hundreds of millions of $$$ in subsidies from these local "counties" and playing the blackmailing game "you stop funding this route, we're out of here".
A couple jurisdiction sued Ryanair over this semi legal racket and won. So Ryanair did kickstart its whole continent expansion with a lot of taxpayer money.
Yeah the European equivalent of Essential Air Service is a bit weird and Ryanair had massive success in rebranding tiny airports who were willing to give them money into new city airports (lookup where Ryanair flies to for Paris, it's 53 miles from the Paris city boundary, requires an 80 minute bus ride to connect to public transport, and isn't in the same province as paris but Ryanair paid no landing or takeoff fees for 5 years when they setup there.