This article is from page 16 of the 2008-08-12 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 16 JPG
RYANAIR boss Michael O’Leary believes it 1s possible that Shannon Airport could be used in its planned transatlantic low fares airlines.
Addressing the Dail ‘Transport Committee, Mr O’Leary said that Ryanair were working on a plan for a new a transatlantic low fares airline.
Stating they hoped this would emerge from a major downturn, he said it was a possibility this new air- line would fly from Shannon.
The main focus of the plan was to Open up transatlantic services from Rome, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Brus-
sels, Paris and, perhaps, “somewhere in Ireland”’.
“I would be delighted to operate out of Shannon, if only to irritate the DAA monopoly. However, it would be on a much larger scale than sim- ply trying to operate transatlantic services out of Ireland.
‘As for the need for Shannon Air- port to upgrade its facilities and services, poor old Pat Shanahan (chairman of the Shannon Airport Authority) is blue in the ear from lis- tening to me stating he should stop upgrading Shannon’s facilities and services. They are absolutely fine.
“Airports have a compulsion to
spend money to upgrade things. They become nervous unless they are wasting money doing so. There is a brand new terminal there and now its management wishes to upgrade.”
“Ryanair has a major problem with Shannon Airport. It paid out between €30 million and €50 million in vol- untary redundancies to people who had not been very busy in recent years.
“While there is a human element to that, someone must pay for £100,000 redundancy packages. Unfortunately, it will fall back on Shannon because the cost should have been picked up by the DAA.
‘Shannon does not need the level of upgrade of facilities and services that it thinks it needs. It simply needs low costs and more routes from Ryanair and other airlines.
“Unfortunately, 78 per cent of the traffic is inbound. The good people of Ennis are not going to Frankfurt in November. It is generally German, French and Italian people coming back in there.”
“Tt 1s logical with the demograph- ics of Shannon. Its hinterland which takes in Ennis, has a population of about 150,000. I have friends in Nenagh who will always drive to Dublin rather than go to Shannon,” he said.