Ryanair, Europe’s No. 1 airline, was today (29 Oct) unlawfully blocked by the Portuguese Ministry of Infrastructure and ANAC from opening three new routes to Morocco causing the totally unnecessary cancellation of flights for over 3,000 Portuguese passengers due to travel from Lisbon this Sunday Oct 31. This is a clear breach of the EU Open Skies Agreement in place with Morocco. Ryanair has operated between Portugal and Morocco for over three years and it is inexplicable why the Ministry of Infrastructure / ANAC have not issued standard flight authorisations to allow these flights to operate.

Over 3,000 Portuguese passengers will now have their travel plans unnecessarily and unlawfully disrupted due to the cancellation of these flights from Sunday Oct 31. Ryanair repeatedly tried to secure these permissions over the past month, but the faceless bureaucrats from the Ministry of Infrastructure all departed for their holiday break on Friday evening, refusing to issue the routine permissions, demonstrating total indifference to the chaos they have caused to over 3,000 Portuguese passengers whose travel plans to Morocco on the busiest weekend of the year are now in tatters.

Ryanair regrets the unnecessary cancellation of the following flights due to the unlawful actions of the Ministry of Infrastructure:

Flights from Porto to Marrakech will operate as scheduled.

Ryanair’s Director of Commercial, Jason McGuinness, said:

“It is incredible that the Portuguese Department of Infrastructure would force the totally unnecessary cancellation of flights for over 3,000 Portuguese passengers from Sunday Oct 31^st. Ryanair already has traffic rights to fly from Portugal to Morocco, successfully operating flights between Portugal and Morocco for over 3 years and there is no good reason for this unlawful action, which is a clear breach of EU law, on the operation of the EU Open Skies agreement.

It is simply outrageous that faceless bureaucrats at the Department of Infrastructure refused to remain at their offices on Friday to resolve this matter but instead departed for the holiday weekend while they wrecked the holiday plans for over 3,000 of their fellow citizens.

Ryanair regrets the unnecessary disruption caused to our passengers by this unlawful action of the Portuguese Department of Infrastructure and will deal with alternative travel arrangements and or refunds for passengers affected.