This article is from page 68 of the 2008-11-18 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 68 JPG
THE Shannon Airport Authority (SAA) has confirmed that the air- port’s overall traffic for the first nine months of 2008 is down 13% on the corresponding period for last year with transatlantic traffic down 24% and London traffic down 16%.
The downturn in these sectors is due to the ending of the Shannon stop-over with the advent of ‘open skies’ in May and the ending of the Shannon-Heathrow route in January.
For the first nine months Shannon had a throughput of just under 2.5 million passengers.
Terminal traffic at 2.2 million is down 11% while traffic for the full year will be down about 400,000 – a decrease of 14% on 2007”.
Announcing its half-yearly results, Ryanair re-iterated its threat to dras- tically reduce its services at Shannon from next November because of the Government’s €10 air travel tax.
In recent days, CityJet boss Geof- frey O’Byrne-White said that the air
travel tax move could result in his airline scrapping plans to begin a service between Shannon and Lon- don City Airport.
CityJet has been examining the fea- sibility of this route for some time, but was constrained by a lack of available aircraft.
Mr O’Byrne-White said the move upset Midwest interests as a number of international flights from Dublin to places such as Manchester and Liverpool will qualify for the lesser €2 exit tax for flights under 300km,
but none from Shannon meet the cri- our
Aer Arann chief executive Pad- raig O Céidigh has also launched a fresh attack on Ryanair’s influence at Shannon in a press interview at the weekend. “They’re in Shannon for around three years now and in that time Shannon has lost seven or eight different airlines. Ryanair are now doing roughly two out of every three flights in and out of Shannon so it’s become a Ryanair airport, while oth- er airlines are being squeezed out.”