Ryanair's finance chief has lambasted the lack of progress on aviation rules after Brexit, saying: “We’re hearing an awful lot about it all be right on the night. But nobody can actually tell me how it’s going to be right on the night.”

Neil Sorahan, the Chief Financial Officer of Europe’s biggest budget airline, told: “We absolutely want to keep Britain flying, we want to continue to have operations between the UK and Europe.

“However, unless people actually start sitting around a table and discussing this, nobody will have this kind of certainty. And that’s a big problem for all the airlines.”

Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK, said: “The Government is fully aware that aviation sits outside of the World Trade Organisation system. We have our own rules and regulations in place and therefore we have no fall-back option. The principle of ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ does not apply to us.”

Earlier, Ryanair announced that some or all of its UK-based aircraft would move to continental Europe in April 2019 if no deal was reached to replace the present “open skies” arrangement.

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