Ryanair has announced that it is grounding seven aircraft at Stansted this winter because increased airport charges mean a number of routes are no longer profitable.

Faced with a hike in airport charges, most airlines would simply increase fares to return the flight to profitability if they want to keep it operating, but Ryanair says it would rather scrap the routes than raise fares. It’s an audacious publicity stunt, aimed at pressuring Stansted into lowering its charges to help the carrier make even more money – today Ryanair announced first quarter profits of €139m, a 20 per cent increase over last year.

With typical bravado, Ryanair maintains that it wants to continue operating the Stansted aircraft this winter but will resolutely battle to keep its fares low, and protect its fare average of £30 for a single ticket. While this is admirable, the more sceptical might suggest that the ongoing scuffle with Stansted over increased charges has given the airline a chance to trim the dead wood from its Stansted network and launch a dramatic attack on the airport owners at the same time.

All airlines adapt schedules between winter and summer to allow for fluctuations in demand, and in this case the affected routes, from Stansted to Malmo, Esbjerg, Poitiers and Genoa, are neither popular winter city break destinations or major ski airports, so would naturally suffer a winter slump in demand. Far from making a retreat from Stansted this winter, one new Ryanair route, to Billund in Denmark, starting on October 29, has already been announced.

In its initial announcement, Ryanair stated that the seven aircraft would sit on the ground at Stansted, but on further questioning said that the aircraft would infact be parked at other airports to avoid paying parking charges to Stansted owners BAA. A spokeswoman for BAA told Times Online Travel that she thought it unlikely that the aircraft would not be used elsewhere in Ryanair’s network, rather than remain on the tarmac throughout winter.

If the Stansted announcement today is a publicity stunt by Ryanair, it would not be the first. In September 2006, the carrier promised free flight vouchers to people who turned up at Barcelona's Plaza de Catalunya with placards criticising Iberia, a stunt which went pear-shaped when thousands, rather than hundreds of people turned up, and for which Ryanair is now facing legal action.

Bully-boy tactics and press coverage has worked for Ryanair in the past, but BAA is standing by its increased charges, which went from around £3.50 to £5.50 per passenger this April. The airport says it has already spent around £2m on terminal security and will spend a further £2.27bn on the airport over the next eight years to add a second runway, if permission is granted, and extend the terminal building.

Investment at some level at Stansted is sorely needed – the airport is the third busiest in the UK and operating at maximum capacity – with heavy congestion in the passport arrivals area that has led to holidaymakers and business travellers waiting for over an hour to come back into the UK in recent months.

As air travellers, we berate Stansted airport for its congestion and lengthy queues and also Ryanair for its bully-boy tactics, but as holidaymakers we have become ruthless bargain hunters, and have lost our loyalty to airlines in favour of low fares.

While the decision by Ryanair to scrap flights these flights at Stansted could mean short term increases in fares by airlines such as British Airways and SAS, who compete on two of these routes, if the demand is there another carrier will cash in by launching new flights, and fares will settle back to the market rate. Whatever today’s announcement by Ryanair achieves, apart from more column inches, it’s unlikely to disadvantage the travelling public.

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