This article is from page 4 of the 2008-07-22 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 4 JPG
THE managing director of Aer Arann has claimed that there has been an exodus of at least six carriers out of Shannon Airport since Rya- nair established its base there.
Addressing the Dail’s Transport committee, Gary Cullen said that the downside to Ryanair’s entry into an airport “is that its sheer strength dis- courages other carriers operating out of that airport”.
Two million Ryanair passengers are expected to fly out of Shannon this year and Mr Cullen said, “It is well known within the industry that other carriers avoid those airports we refer to as Ryanair airports like
the plague because they cannot earn a profit from operating out of them. The seventh carrier to withdraw was Aer Lingus, which withdrew the Shannon-Heathrow route.”
Mr Cullen said, “I am not privy to the books of Shannon Airport and I do not know whether that develop- ment is a good or a bad one. One could argue that Shannon Airport has gone further down the road with Ryanair but it has the transatlantic business as a balance.
“One can observe that Ryanair is a highly successful airline at driving volume through an airport, of that there is no doubt. It is a major suc- cess and good luck to it. There are downsides and other implications.
“With regard to Aer Arann operat- ing out of Shannon Airport, this is linked to what I have just said. We are wary about beginning to operate any UK services out of Shannon because of the strength of Ryanair there.
“We continually talk to long-haul airlines and if we get an opportunity to provide a feeder service contract to a long-haul carrier, we certainly would be interested in doing that.”
Mr Cullen did, however, open up the possibility of Aer Arann putting in place a new Shannon-Dublin serv- ice if it can agree with Aer Lingus to share on the route.
In answers to Clare TD, Timmy Dooley, Mr Cullen said, “Aer Arann operated the Shannon-Dublin route,
but withdrew from it because we could not make any money on tt.
“If we could reach an agreement with Aer Lingus whereby it would operate the morning flight and we would operate the evening flight and we could share in that way, we would do that, as that would make sense. We know that if we were to oper- ate that route on our own without a link with another carrier and had to compete directly with Ryanair, that would not work.”
Only last January, Ryanair pulled its Shannon-Dublin service after only two months on the route. He said, “If carriers co-shared the morning and evening flights, they could make a go out it.”