Hard Brexit could ground Ryanair flights to and from UK for 'three weeks', says airline boss

Michael O’Leary said the company is big enough to weather the storm

Ryanair flights to and from the UK could be grounded for up to three weeks in the event of a hard Brexit, CEO Michael O’Leary warned ahead of a meeting of European Union leaders in Brussels on Wednesday 17 October.

The airline boss said it would be “very painful”.

“We can ground airplanes for a week, two weeks, three weeks,” O’Leary told Reuters. “But we are a big company, we can survive.”

Europe’s largest airline operates around 120 international outbound flights a day from its main base, London Stansted airport, with a similar number of inbound flights.

If all UK-international routes were affected for three weeks, more than 5,000 flights could be grounded, not including international flights to and from Ryanair’s other UK bases of Aberdeen, London Gatwick, Belfast, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bristol, Cardiff, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and London Luton.

“We remain concerned at the increasing risk of a hard (no-deal) Brexit in March 2019,” a Ryanair spokesperson told The Independent.

“While we hope that a 21-month transition agreement from March 2019 will be agreed, recent events in the UK have added uncertainty, and we believe that the risk of a hard Brexit (which could lead to flights being grounded for a period of days or weeks) is being underestimated.”

O’Leary has been vocal in his criticism of the government’s slow progress on Brexit.

He said in August last year: “The onus is on the British government to deliver a deal. If there’s no deal by March ’19, Britain gets thrown out of the European Union, you’re out of open skies and there will be no flights.”

He added that Theresa May needed to “pull her finger out and get a deal done”.

Ryanair has had a rocky few months despite flying record numbers of passengers. Industrial action from dissatisfied cabin crew and pilots in a handful of countries is ongoing, while a cut in the airline’s profits forecast of €150m knocked 10 per cent off share prices at the beginning of October 2018.