Ryanair reduces flights from Berlin and Hamburg, more for Cologne

Ryanair has announced it will cut some routes from Berlin and Hamburg and add flights from Cologne. The budget airline continues to rail against high operating costs at German airports.

Ryanair launches 2026 summer timetable

At a press conference in Berlin, Ryanair said it will launch 14 new routes serving German airports this summer, but will cut other routes. The changes mean the budget airline’s total capacity serving German airports will be around 220.000 fewer seats than in summer 2025.

Flights serving Berlin-Brandenburg Airport (BER) and Hamburg Airport (HAM) will see the biggest cuts. From summer 2026, flights between BER and Valencia will be cut by 43 percent, Bergamo and Ibiza by 41 percent, Manchester by 34 percent and Madrid by 25 percent. Ryanair flights from Hamburg Airport will be cut by 20 percent and the airline will no longer serve airports in Dortmund, Leipzig and Dresden.

But connections will be added at other German airports. There will be new routes to and from Cologne/Bonn Airport, Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden and Nuremberg. The airline will increase the number of flights to and from smaller German airports, namely Friedrichshafen, Saarbrücken, Weeze (near the Dutch border in North Rhine-Westphalia), and Memmingen (near Munich).

New destinations from these airports include Alicante, Palma de Mallorca, Lamezia Terme, Trapani, Rabat, Rimini, Amman, Bucharest and Tirana. You can find the full list of connections in the Ryanair press release.

Ryanair continues to protest operational charges

Ryanair has long protested Germany’s comparatively high Air Transportation Charges (ACT) and aviation tax (Luftverkehrsabgabe). 

Introduced in 2024, the Luftverkehrsabgabe increased taxes on each passenger flying within Germany or to another EU country from 12,73 euros to 15,53 euros. For trips further afield, more than 6.000 kilometres, the tax per passenger increased from 58,06 euros to 70,83 euros. 

These extra costs were generally passed on to passengers, but Ryanair made multiple announcements that it would cut flights from German airports unless taxes were reduced. In November 2025, the German government said it would reduce the tax from July 2026 and freeze ACT rates, a move Ryanair has called “a welcome first step”. 

But the company is calling on Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder (CDU) to “fully abolish the aviation tax, halve excessive ATC and security charges”. The latest tranche of new Ryanair connections and cuts from German airports is generally seen as a negotiating tactic to pressure the government.

In recent years, the airline has cut connections to and from German airports with higher operational fees, namely Berlin, and introduced more routes at airports with lower operational fees. 

In another case, the German government granted public funding to Frankfurt-Hahn Airport and struck two marketing agreements and three airport service agreements with Ryanair. A 2024 EU Commission investigation concluded that the agreements were incompatible with state aid rules and ordered the German government to recover the 14 million euros in funding from the airport and airline.