The Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, has once again responded with irony to the airline Ryanair on social media, this time relying on the public statements of the company's CEO, Michael O'Leary, about the bottlenecks and delays in the deliveries of the Boeing 737 MAX.
On his official profile on X (formerly Twitter), the minister published the following message: "I don't know guys. I trusted what your CEO says. Maybe I should have looked for a more reliable source."
Puente's new response comes after the low-cost airline labeled his previous words as "false." On that occasion, in an interview with Europa Press, the Transport Minister linked the cancellation of flights in the network of Spanish regional airports to the global shortage of aircraft from the American manufacturer and to internal financial optimization decisions by Ryanair, dismissing that the reason was the fees set by Aena.
To support his argument, the minister referred to information appearing in reference media of the international and specialized economic press, including Quartz and Tourinews, where the repeated criticisms of Ryanair's leadership towards Boeing are recorded.
In those reports, it details how O'Leary lashes out at the American manufacturer for the quality control problems in the production lines in Seattle and acknowledges the direct effect of the delays of the 737 MAX on the airline's operational planning.
With this reply, Transport aims to deactivate the narrative of the Irish company, which attributes the cut of around three million seats in regional airports for the 2025 and 2026 fiscal years to a supposed lack of competitiveness of Aena.
The Department headed by Puente maintains that airport fees in Spain continue to be among the lowest in Europe and frames Ryanair's strategy as a pressure operation on the Government to lower its operating costs at secondary airports.