OREANDA-NEWS. July 02, 2013. Ryanair, Europe’s only ultra-low cost carrier (ULCC), noted that the UK Competition Commission has extended the timetable for its investigation into Ryanair’s 6 year old minority shareholding in Aer Lingus from 11th July to 5th September, an extension of 8 weeks.
 
Ryanair believes this extension has been caused by the UKCC’s realisation that it has no case and has produced no evidence of any influence or lessening of competition arising from Ryanair’s 6 ? year old minority stake. Indeed the UKCC is bound by a legal duty of sincere cooperation to respect the European Commission’s recent (Feb 2013) ruling that competition has intensified between Ryanair and Aer Lingus over the past 6 ? years.
 
As the UKCC’s provisional thinking makes clear, its case now depends on three invented and factually inaccurate concerns which have been disproven by the past 6 ? years of evidence as follows:

A. The UKCC believes that Ryanair “might” block an Aer Lingus rights issue, despite the written evidence it has received that Ryanair has         repeatedly assured Aer Lingus that it will support any rights issue in order to prevent dilution.
 
B. The UKCC believes that Ryanair “might” block the sale of Heathrow slots, despite the fact that Ryanair recently (April 2013) supported the proposed sale by Aer Lingus of a pair of Heathrow slots to BA. However, this CC concern is obviously spurious given that the sale of Heathrow slots would reduce competition on the Dublin-London route and therefore the theoretical blocking of any such slot sale would promote, rather than lessen competition.
 
C.  The UK CC believes that Ryanair “might” prevent Aer Lingus taking over another airline or another EU airline taking over Aer Lingus. Again this concern is refuted by the evidence of Ryanair’s repeated statements (Sept 2011 and May 2012) that Ryanair would consider any proposal by another airline to acquire Aer Lingus and/or to acquire Ryanair’s shareholding, despite the fact that Ryanair has received no such approaches from any other EU airline.