On 8 November 2018 a Ryanair-operated Boeing 737 was arrested at Bordeaux-Merignac Airport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While commercial aircraft are sometimes arrested in France, these are rarely operated by major airlines with Europe-wide operations. The arrest of Ryanair’s aircraft thus deserves attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While developing its French network, Ryanair received support from various regional airports in France, including theMixed Syndicate of Charente Airports (SMAC), a public entity which manages certain regional airports. The EuropeanCommission ultimately found this financial support to be illegal (as it breached the prohibition on state subsidiesunder several EU treaties) and, as a result, Ryanair had to repay the illicit subsidy to the SMAC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Ryanair failed to make the requested payment in full, the SMAC requested the Bordeaux court to order thearrest of a Ryanair aircraft on its arrival at Bordeaux-Merignac Airport. This request was granted and the aircraft wasarrested. Ryanair paid the requested amount within hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court order was based on Article L6123-2 of the Code of Transport, which provides, among other things, that theprecautionary arrest of an aircraft may be requested by the minister of transport if a state subsidy has not been repaidin accordance with a European Commission decision or where the European Court of Justice has voided the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This provision was perfectly suited for the case at hand. However, in other circumstances (eg, if a creditor has a claimagainst an aircraft’s owner), specific conditions must be met in order for aircraft to be arrested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For further information on this topic please contact Matthieu de Varax or Wissam Dahmani at Odi-se Avocats bytelephone (+33 1 7935 0750) or email (mdevarax@odise.com or wdahmani@odise.com). The Odi-se Avocats websitecan be accessed at www.odise.com.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On 8 November 2018 a Ryanair-operated Boeing 737 was arrested at Bordeaux-Merignac Airport. While commercial aircraft are sometimes arrested in France, these are rarely operated by major airlines with Europe-wide operations. The arrest of Ryanair’s aircraft thus deserves attention. While developing its French network, Ryanair received support from various regional airports in France, including theMixed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-non-classe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/odise.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/odise.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/odise.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odise.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odise.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/odise.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":643,"href":"https:\/\/odise.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions\/643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odise.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/odise.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odise.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odise.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}