Budget airline Ryanair has been stripped of the rights to operate two routes from Eindhoven airport as a punishment for causing “repeated and deliberate” delays.

Air traffic co-ordinator ACNL, which manages take-off and landing slots at Dutch airports, imposed the rare sanction on two arrival slots from Pisa and Sofia, local newspaper Eindhovens Dagblad reported.

Ryanair’s Monday night flights from Bulgaria and Thursday night flights from Italy were delayed by an hour on average during the summer, which also held up the return trips.

The ACNL said the airline had deliberately breached the rules by delaying the flights dozens of times. Ryanair appealed against the decision, but lost the case at the district court in Haarlem.

The court ruled that the ACNL had followed the correct procedure by issuing a warning to the airline in June before imposing the sanctions in August after the delays persisted.

Ryanair will now have to reschedule the flights or remove them from its timetable until a solution can be found.