The saga of Ryanair’s departure from the Azores, now seven months old, has recently taken a new and rather astonishing turn, following a revelation by the airline’s chief executive that its withdrawal from São Miguel and Terceira was attributable to a breach of contract by the Regional Government. He nevertheless left the door open to reconsidering the decision, provided that future negotiations were conducted with interlocutors who could be “trusted.”
To understand the significance of this latest development, we must return to the circumstances surrounding the airline’s departure, and the arguments advanced at the time by the low-cost carrier. Those explanations referred exclusively to increases in airport charges, rising air navigation fees, and the environmental costs arising from European regulations as the reasons for spreading its wings and abandoning the Azores. No allegation of contractual breach was made at the time. Indeed, Visit Azores, the organisation responsible for negotiating promotional agreements with airlines, categorically denies that any such breach occurred.
Meanwhile, adding further turbulence to an already unsettled affair, the Ponta Delgada Chamber of Commerce and Industry has issued a statement suggesting that “the failure to fulfil contractual obligations is associated with the costs assumed by the Regional Government in requiring the airline to operate services to Terceira as well.” The São Miguel Chamber further recalls that, in 2025, it had warned of similar difficulties in negotiations with EasyJet, arising from the intention to make operations to Ponta Delgada conditional upon the establishment of connections to that island—Terceira. And there we have it! A convenient scapegoat has been found, and the message is duly conveyed: future negotiations should concern São Miguel alone, because bringing Terceira aboard the same aircraft apparently causes the entire operation to founder. There is a particularly unflattering name for such an attitude.
Having reached this point, certain matters demand clarification from those who bear the responsibility for providing it—and, in this instance, that responsibility can rest only with the Regional Government. If Ryanair, seven months after its departure, now invokes a breach of contract, the most straightforward and unequivocal means of establishing the facts would be to make the contract public. That document must surely set out the obligations undertaken by both parties, the financial commitments involved, the amounts payable, the applicable deadlines and methods of payment, and, presumably, the penalties stipulated in the event of non-compliance. To remain confined to an accusation of contractual breach by the airline and a denial of wrongdoing by the entity alleged to have signed the agreement is to leave the entire matter suspended in an unacceptable realm of abstraction, from which no meaningful conclusion can be drawn. Moreover, it is a serious matter for one party to cast doubt upon the integrity and trustworthiness of another; it is equally serious for the party thus accused to fail to defend its reputation.
At this juncture, we would do well to remember that what is at stake is the expenditure of public funds—money derived from the taxes we all pay. Those entrusted with administering such resources have an unequivocal obligation to account for their stewardship, and that accountability must be exercised publicly, in the name of transparency. Anything less treats the right of institutions lightly, and those who represent them, to their good name and reputation, while drawing an entire people into the disquieting consequences of an affair that remains needlessly shrouded in uncertainty.
Fram an editorial by Diário Insular-José Lourenço-director. The photo is from RyanAir’s, Facebook page.