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When a spokesman for Blackpool Airport revealed last week that, from the beginning of next year, passengers would be charged ten pounds in exchange for free parking during their holiday, nobody could have guessed what impact this would have in such a short space of time. The ten pound passenger charge was introduced in an attempt to increase funding and attract more travellers from across the north of England.

However, it now seems that the plan has backfired, since Ryanair, the extremely popular budget airline, has announced that it is set to halt all of its services which usually depart from the airport. A spokesman for the airline described the day of the announcement as a “black day” for Blackpool. The deputy chief executive for Ryanair, Michael Cawley, revealed his disgust at Blackpool’s decision to introduce the charge. He believes it is an “extremely regressive step” which will see passengers forking out far more money than is necessary.

The flights from Ryanair will be stopped on the fourth of January, 2009, which is the day before the charge begins. The move will worry the officials at Blackpool, since over one million passengers have travelled on planes provided by the airline since Ryanair launched routes departing from the airport back in the early part of 2003. David Kershaw, the chief executive of the airport, believed that the ten pound charge would “attract new airlines” but he could never have imagined that these new airlines would have to replace popular ones such as Ryanair.