Ryanair’s French Exit: How Volotea Quietly Owns the Abandoned Routes
Hello everyone. Let’s talk about France-the self-proclaimed queen of tourism, pulling in nearly 90 million visitors in 2024. That’s right, the country has turned into the Disneyland of tourism, complete with overpriced croissants, crowded museums, and now, a shiny new tax to make your holiday flights even more delightful. If you were already getting fleeced in Paris cafés for your €8 espresso, France has decided it’s time to extend that sense of betrayal to the skies. Bravo, truly magnifique!
The Great French Air Tax Fiasco
The culprit is something pompously titled the “taxe de solidarité sur les billets d’avion.” Now, don’t be fooled. This isn’t some noble crusade to save the Amazon rainforest or relocate penguins to cooler climates. It’s a blatant cash grab dressed up in virtue-signaling robes. The French government slapped on a 180% increase-yes, one hundred and eighty-rocketing the departure tax from a measly €2.66 to €9.50. Want to feel that sting? Imagine getting a critical hit in Dark Souls when all you wanted was to open a random chest. Surprise! It’s a mimic, and you’ve lost your savings.
Other countries play the taxation game too. Spain, for example, plans a “tiny” increase of €0.68 starting in 2026. Germany and Italy pile on their charges, though not with the sheer audacity of France. But naturally, France had to one-up everyone like that one greedy raid leader who insists on looting everything and won’t share the legendary sword because it’s “for the good of the guild.”
Ryanair Throws Its Toys Out of the Parisian Pram
Enter Ryanair-the airline that operates more like a budget video game publisher cashing in on microtransactions than an air carrier. Known for its cutthroat tactics, Ryanair declared that the French tax hike makes routes unprofitable. And unlike most corporations that quietly grumble while still milking you, Ryanair is storming out of the lobby mid-match. It’s rage-quitting in winter, pulling out of Strasbourg, Brive-la-Gaillarde, and Bergerac airports. That’s 25 routes and 750,000 seats deleted from the French market-essentially Ryanair hitting “uninstall” on Air France’s national playthrough just to make a point.
And those poor cities? They’re collateral damage. Brive loses its link to London-Stansted. Strasbourg waves goodbye to connections with Porto and Agadir. Bergerac watches a third of its airport’s activity vanish, like deleting your save file after 80 hours of gameplay. Game over, small French cities. Thanks for playing!
Ryanair’s take? Unless France dials back this “unfair air tax,” they’ll take their toys-and their planes-elsewhere. Sweden, Hungary, Italy: congratulations, you’re next in line for Ryanair’s discount baggage fees and €6 bottles of water.
Volotea: The Opportunistic Underdog
Where Ryanair sees injustice, Volotea sees free loot drops. This Spanish low-cost airline, usually relegated to mid-tier maps connecting smaller cities, now gets to swoop in and claim abandoned Ryanair routes. It’s the classic “chaotic good” villain in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign-uninvited but oddly helpful. Volotea is already moving to cover Strasbourg to Porto and Agadir, bringing with it 70 local jobs. A small win, yes, though one feels more like a side quest reward than a main storyline triumph.
But hey, for French travelers feeling abandoned, Volotea may suddenly look like your savior-until you realize that they’re just another budget airline waiting to charge you €12 for tea and punish your luggage for being one millimeter oversized. It’s less “knight in shining armor” and more “merchant in Skyrim selling you back your stolen sword at triple the price.”
The Bigger Picture: Taxation, Tourism, and Theater
What we’re really seeing is the theater of modern European aviation. Governments treat airlines as bottomless piggy banks, taxing them into oblivion while pontificating about “sustainability.” Airlines fight back, not out of some altruistic love for passengers, but out of sheer self-interest. Look no further than Ryanair’s gleeful admission that out of €13.4 billion in projected revenue for 2024, €4.299 billion comes from-drum roll-fees. Yes, fees. They don’t want to fly planes; they just want to monetize your suitcase the way EA tried to monetize Star Wars loot boxes.
So here we are: passengers still get gouged, cities lose routes, and airlines parade around pretending like they’re Robin Hood while everyone knows they’re closer to a payday loan office. Meanwhile, governments puff up with environmental talk as if a higher tax makes planes emit fewer greenhouse gases. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. It’s the same tired conspiracy where “green” really means “green money”-for someone else’s pocket.
Final Diagnosis
From a doctor’s perspective, this whole scenario is a mess of untreated symptoms. France’s tax addiction is spiraling out of control, Ryanair’s ego injury is visible on the X-rays, and Volotea’s opportunistic infection is setting in nicely. The prognosis? Travelers are once again the patient paying the bill while the so-called healers (governments and budget airlines) argue over who gets to poke the wound first.
So is this good? Bad? Somewhere in between? Let’s call it what it is: bad. A bad decision propped up as environmental policy, escalating into a bad tantrum from a major airline, leaving smaller cities with a bad outlook for connectivity. The only winners here are the accountants and, of course, Volotea’s executives, snickering somewhere in Madrid.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is entirely my opinion.
Article source: Ryanair está abandonando los aeropuertos pequeños de Francia. Hay una inesperada beneficiada: una aerolínea española, https://www.xataka.com/movilidad/ryanair-esta-abandonando-aeropuertos-pequenos-francia-hay-inesperada-beneficiada-aerolinea-espanola
