BUDGET airline Ryanair is cutting winter flights to Majorca for commercial reasons and is calling for a reduction in Air Passenger Duty.

Ryanair said the service which ran last year from Edinburgh is being scrapped from 26 October.

The move came after the Irish airline warned it will have to halt flights from the UK for “weeks or months” if Theresa May does not seal an early bilateral Brexit deal on international aviation.

The Majorca Daily Bulletin, a news organisation for English-speaking residents in the Balearic Islands, reported that Ryanair blamed the Scottish government for the withdrawal of direct flights to Majorca.

The Bulletin carried a statement from Ryanair calling on the Government to abolish Air Passenger Duty (APD), which it reported as the airline "pointing the finger very much at the Scottish government".

Ryanair was reported as to have said: "Our Edinburgh-Palma route will not operate this winter for commercial reasons, as we continually review each of our 1,800 routes. However, we continue to offer the lowest fares to/from Edinburgh with 38 routes to choose from.

"Air Passenger Duty continues to be a hindrance to Scotland, and we welcome the Scottish parliament finance committee’s recent support for the government’s plan to halve APD.

"We now call on the Scottish government to fully abolish APD, which would enable Ryanair to base more aircraft in Scotland, add even more routes and create thousands of jobs."

Last night a Scottish Government spokesperson said ministers were committed to abolishing APD when the change was affordable.

The government spokesperson said: “We agree that Air Passenger Duty acts as a barrier to Scotland’s ability to secure new direct international services and maintain existing ones.

"Our plan to cut Air Departure Tax by 50 per cent by the end of the Parliament, and then abolish it when public finances permit, is a fundamental component to improving Scotland’s international connectivity and providing a real boost to our economy.

“As Ryanair themselves have acknowledged this week, Brexit is causing huge uncertainty for the aviation industry – as it is for the wider economy.

"As we have warned previously, a hard Brexit threatens to cost our economy around £11 billion a year by 2030, and cost the country 80,000 jobs over a decade.”

The remarks came after Ryanair's chief financial officer, Neil Sorahan, said the suspension of flights from UK airports was “a very distinct possibility”.

He added: “In the worst-case scenario there will be no flights in or out of the UK to Europe for a period, for all carriers.

“There could be a situation where you’re going to have get comfortable with staycations for the summer of 2019: those trips down to Portugal and Spain, unless you can swim, aren’t really going to happen.”

Ryanair, a Dublin-based company, is legally allowed to operate out of the UK under a Europe-wide "open skies" regulation that allows all EU airlines and others in the “common travel area” to fly in and out of any country signed up to the pact.

The open policy binds EU members to regulatory oversight by the European court of justice and to freedom of movement, two red lines for the UK government in Brexit talks.