The chief executive of German low-cost carrier Germanwings Thomas Winkelmann has predicted the demise of Ryanair because it does not attract the corporate market.

The airline boss told Travelmole that airports also found that the more Ryanair flies to an airport, the higher the losses it has to sustain. He added that tax payers in destinations should not have to bear the brunt of Ryanair’s business model.

He said: “I think the Ryanair model is coming to an end. The more Ryanair flies to a destination, the more losses taken by the airport and the local tax payers wont stand for that.”

Ryanair was unavailable for comment.

Winkelmann, who was in the UK to promote his airline’s new flight between Manchester and Cologne/Bonn, said the economic downturn, however, had provided the right growing conditions for most low-cost carriers. It had made travellers more price sensitive, made class differentiation irrelevant on short-haul flights and necessitated the lowest possible distribution costs.

He added: “Travellers are acutely aware of the whole cost of a trip and do not want to fly from nowhere to nowhere, having to pay for car hire on top of the flight. That deters both leisure and business travellers.”