Ryanair Ditching Maastricht Airport Base

Irish discount airline Ryanair will cancel its permanent presence at the Maastricht-Aachen Airport from March 2014, according to L1.nl. The Limburg-based broadcaster reported that the airline is not eliminating Maastricht as a destination, but aircraft will no longer be based at the southern Netherlands airport. Sources close to the situation told L1 that only a few routes to and from Maastricht will remain. Ryanair refused to comment on the report. The airline created the small base operation just over a year ago, with an estimated investment of €70 million. A Ryanair plane flies over the city hall in Maastricht (Hermann Luyken/Wikimedia) Ryanair was a cornerstone of a Limburg provincial plan to take over the airport and guarantee its future. "We have recently been informed about this by the management of the airport. We can not tell what this means just yet," a spokesperson for the province said.