This article is from page 16 of the 2012-09-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 16 JPG
NERO fiddled, while Rome burned.
It was this analogy that floated around Ennis Town Council on Monday as Fine Gael representative Johnny Flynn received unanimous cross-party backing for his demand that the process of giving Shannon Airport its full independence from the Dublin Airport Authority be ac- celerated.
This demand for swift action came against a backdrop of another alarming drop in Shannon figures, with the latest results confirming that commercial movements at the international airport have fallen for the first seven months of the year when compared to the same period in 2011.
This downward spiral started with a two per cent drop in movements in January and peaked in April when the figures showed nearly a ten per cent drop on the corresponding month from 2011.
The figures then remained relatively stable for May and June, as the returns posted for commercial movements only showed a 1.6 and 1.3 drop respectively, but the slide accelerated once more in July with a four per cent drop.
These trends are set to continue for the remainder of 2012, which will en- sure that returns at the year end will show nearly a 50 per cent reduction in commercial terminal movements from the peak of 2007 which represented the peak of Ryanair’s association with the airport.
Ryanair currently operates to 11 destinations in Britain and mainland Europe out of Shannon. This represents over a 300 per cent cut in operations out of Shannon from a high of over 50 flights in 2008.
The airline began reducing its Shannon-based aircraft in February 2009.
It was this slide in Shannon’s fortunes that prompted the Government to embark on a consultative process over the future of the airport that was co-ordinated by Booz and Company in 2011, ahead of the formal announcement in May that Shannon would be given its full independence from the DAA.