Leeds escapes as Ryanair cuts services

The cutbacks include a 17% reduction in its services at Stansted airport in Essex, where the Irish no-frills carrier will be handling 1.5 million fewer passengers than last winter.

Ryanair will be cutting winter flights at most of its other UK bases, except Edinburgh and Leeds Bradford, and will - overall - fly two million fewer passengers than last winter.

Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary cited the "damaging" Air Passenger Duty (APD) airport departure tax as a reason for the capacity reduction.

The Government is exploring the possibility of replacing APD with a per-plane tax.

Ryanair said today that it would switch its unneeded London-based aircraft "to other European bases where governments have scrapped tourist taxes and reduced passenger charges, in some case to zero, in order to grow tourism and traffic".

Mr O'Leary said: "Sadly, UK traffic and tourism continues to collapse while Ryanair continues to grow rapidly in those countries which welcome tourists instead of taxing them.

"Ryanair's capacity cutbacks show just how much the UK's tourist tax and (airport operator) BAA's high airport charges are damaging UK tourism and the British economy generally."

He went on: "Independent capacity analysis shows that growth has returned to the Belgian, Dutch and Spanish markets after their governments scrapped tourist taxes and/or reduced airport charges.

"Today's cutbacks underline the urgent need to break up the high-cost BAA airport monopoly (as recommended by the Competition Commission) and to scrap the damaging 11 tourist tax which has caused UK traffic to collapse over the past two years."