This article is from page 13 of the 2008-08-26 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 13 JPG
THE negative effect of the Aer Lin- gus decision to abandon its Shannon/ Heathrow route is highlighted in the latest figures which show the airport losing almost 70,000 passengers on its London routes since the start of the year.
Figures released by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) show that Shannon has lost 68,423 passengers on its London routes for the first sev- en months of the year.
Figures for July show a drop of 16 per cent or 11,423 passengers to and from London on the corresponding period last year when the Heathrow service was in place.
Ryanair has introduced an addi- tional service to try to make up for the shortfall but they are failing to make up the deficit.
Ryanair has increased passenger numbers on its Stansted service from 29,333 to 33,946 for July and also increased its Gatwick number from 10,902 last year to 18,915.
The airline also launched a Luton service that delivered 8,171 in July. However, the new service doesn’t make up for the 32,220 that used the Shannon Heathrow service in July 2007.
Many passengers in the Mid-west are going to Cork to fly to Heath- row and the Cork Airport Authority (CAA) continues to benefit at Shan- non’s expense.
Cork increased its passenger num- bers to and from Heathrow during July by 19 per cent on the corre-
sponding month last year. The airport recorded a 13.5 per cent increase on its London Heathrow service for the first six months, going from 224,669 for the first six months of last year to 255,000 from January to June 2008. The bad news for Shannon was not confined to the London market with the economic downturn contributing to a drop of 11 per cent in passenger numbers to other UK destinations in July. 48,739 passengers used Shan- non to and from other UK destina- tions compared to 55,349 last year.
Routes to show a drop in traffic include Glasgow Prestwick (down 1,558); Nottingham (down 4,142) and Liverpool (down 1,314).
However, other routes performed well including Bournemouth (up 772) and Manchester (up 2,237).
With a number of Ryanair routes not performing as well as they did last year, airport management will be wary of Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary’s comment that Shannon is only one of two Ryanair basses that is losing money.