CHARLES ROBERTS For many months the questions have hung in the air - Will Ryanair pull out of the London Stansted route? And will Poitiers Airport survive if it does? Thousands of people from East Anglia and beyond have come to the department of Vienne to spend their holidays here.

CHARLES ROBERTS

For many months the questions have hung in the air - Will Ryanair pull out of the London Stansted route? And will Poitiers Airport survive if it does?

Thousands of people from East Anglia and beyond have come to the department of Vienne to spend their holidays here. Some have chosen rented gîtes, houses, flats and hotels. Otherwise they have turned a holiday into a search for that home in the sun they have dreamed about, either as a holiday home - or a permanent one.

But now it's Official: Ryanair has decided to “freeze” for the coming winter all London-Poitiers flights. There is also a veiled undertaking that the service will resume at the beginning of March '08.

This was confirmed by the sales and marketing director of Ryanair in France, Mathieu Glasson. But why such a hibernation? asked Emmanuel Touron, of the local morning newspaper.

First of all, because the company “recognises a strong fall in the use of flights during winter”.

(You don't have to be a marketing director to predict that!).

Secondly, because Ryanair's president has decided to reduce by 30 per cent the number of his planes on British tarmacs, and because the British Airports Authority has strongly increased its airport taxes.

In Poitiers, the marketing director of the Chamber of commerce & industry of the Vienne, Stéphane de Dianous, knows that this increase in taxation appears on the price of tickets, notes Emmanuel Touron dryly. As a consequence, it has cooled off the British clients, who are traditionally very attached to “low cost” services . . .

“Imagine that to fill its planes at the beginning of summer, Ryanair had to sell seats at a cut price on departures from London Empty seats in the planes during summer. It's ridiculous!”

It seems that M. de Dianous thinks that the London-Poitiers flight, already weakened by the opening at the beginning of the year of the Nantes-link, would be the one most threatened by the situation. But it would not be the only one in the sights.

That explains why local authorities in Poitiers are so concerned. Since 2003 they have ben paying to Ryanair an annual subsidy of 500,000 Euros (about £340,000). Not surprisingly, they have been “a little bit annoyed” at having learned the news via the grapevine.

“It was a Ryanair passenger who told us - after he had read it in the British press”, Mr de Dianous admits with a sigh. .

For Poitiers the stakes are high. First, the London flight provides Poitiers airport with two-thirds of its airline traffic (95,000 Ryanair customers out of a total of 45,000 other users).

At Ryanair, Mathieu Glasson tries to be reassuring: “There's no threat, nothing is decided, negotiations are in the pipeline. At the Chamber of commerce, there is still hope of salvaging things from the situation.”

But all is not happy and cheerful. Meanwhile, the partners among the local authorities and the Chamber of commerce don't like the idea of building an airport “for peanuts an airport for 3m Euros, capable of handling 200,000 passengers a year.

The following facts and figures are worth consideration. Visits in Vienne by British residents and holiday makers to restaurants, hotels, attractions and visits of many kinds are estimated to bring into the region around 10 million euros each year. More, around 11,000 Britons have houses for permanent use or for second homes in le Poitou.

If you take a passing interest in French politics, it may seem curious that there is no reference in today's column to Madame Royal. The same Mme Royal who had great ambitions to become President of the Republic, The woman who threw out her husband from the family home - and announced from the TV screen her decision to the nation at the crucial climax of the Presidential race.

She is the same Madame Royal who happens to be President of this region of Poitou Charentes, of which the Vienne is a part. From here she hands out her passionate socialist diktats.

It was with such a diktat that she centred on Poitiers airport a destructive attack. Her role was aimed at starving the finances of Ryanair, in the expectation of putting the Irish airline out of business.

Two years ago she addressed a high level meeting of her Party. The message she sent out was clear: Not a penny more. In her socialist book, Ryanair is not only a private company. It's a racketeer which makes money.

The then leader of the conservative UMP, struck her flag with precision: “The arrival of the English in our region has brought new life to the territory”.