Britain must prioritise aviation in Brexit negotiations if it is to avoid major disruption to air travel, budget carrier Ryanair warned, echoing growing concerns across the sector as Britain triggers its exit from the EU.

Airlines based in the EU have the right to fly to, from and within any country in the bloc thanks to the single aviation market created in the 1990s, but Britain now has just two years to renegotiate access or come up with an alternative system.

“There is a distinct possibility that there may be no flights between the UK and Europe for a period of time after March 2019,” said Ryanair’s chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs.

UK-based low-cost carriers, especially Luton-based easyJet, are among those most affected by Brexit, because they typically make more use of the EU rights to fly between other member states and not just to and from the UK.

They could lose that right after Brexit. EasyJet said it was close to applying for a licence to set up an operating company within the EU to protect its intra-EU flights. Its headquarters and listing would remain in Britain, it added.

Jacobs said there was no time to lose to strike an aviation deal between Britain and the EU, as airlines need to finalise their 2019 summer schedules in the first half of next year.

While British Prime Minister Theresa May has said no Brexit deal – and a return to World Trade Organisation rules – was better than a bad deal, aviation is not covered by WTO, creating greater uncertainty over what might happen.

Since Britain’s June 23 vote to leave the EU, easyJet shares are down 35 per cent, Wizz Air’s are down 18 per cent, Ryanair’s are up four per cent and British Airways owner IAG’s are up 0.7 per cent. Shares in Germany’s Lufthansa, meanwhile, are up 24 per cent.

European airports have also called for a back-up plan, saying a return to decades-old traffic rights deals should be avoided. Traffic rights between Germany and Britain could revert back to a bilateral deal from 1955.

But while some in the industry want to push aviation to the top of the negotiating list, there has been some push back.

German aviation association BDL has said it supported the German government view of not allowing any cherry-picking in Brexit talks and Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said he expected France and Germany would not agree to prioritising aviation.

“The UK airlines say they want a shortcut. But that’s something Hollande and Merkel won’t do,” he said in Frankfurt earlier this week in comments confirmed by the company.

Another issue for airlines is ownership structure. Ryanair was 53.6 per cent owned by EU nationals in mid-2016, including 20 per cent ownership by UK nationals, meaning that following Brexit it may fall foul of rules stating that EU carriers must be majority-owned by EU investors.

However, Jacobs said in a recent interview that he did not expect that to be a problem.

“If you look at our investor base, they are big international investors with offices all over Europe and could transfer the shares. So I think that will be solved,” he said.

Ryanair sets out in a document to shareholders on its website the actions it can take to limit share ownership by non-EU nationals.

In the case of easyJet, the 34 per cent shareholding owned by founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou and his family could be classed as Cypriot, rather than British, in order to meet the requirement to still be classed as an EU airline. (Reuters)