This article is from page 32 of the 2008-07-15 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 32 JPG
THE demise of US airline American Transair (ATA) has had minimal im- pact on the number of US military personnel going through Shannon Airport, new figures confirm.
According to the figures released yesterday by the Shannon Airport Authority (SAA), 124,441 members of the US military went through the airport in the first six months of this year on 893 flights.
This represents an increase of 36 per cent on the 90,897 that went through Shannon on the correspond- ing period in 2007.
During the first quarter of 2008, over 66,000 US personnel went through Shannon. It was speculated upon that the bankruptcy of one of the troop carriers, ATA, at the end of March would have a negative effect on the numbers.
Second quarter figures show that 57,/74 troops passed through com- pared to 66,667 between January to March.
Well over a million US military personnel have gone through Shan- non since the invasion of Iraq.
The SAA does not release the prof- its made from the US military traffic. But it is estimated that the SAA will have made a profit of €7 million last year through this business.
Speaking last year the chairman of
the SAA, Pat Shanahan said: “Shan- non has a tradition of handling mili- tary traffic. We do it very well and we have the infrastructure to do so. Geographically, the airport 1s ideally located between the two great con- WDA OLAS
“It is a business we do very well. Obviously the ultimate decision is a government decision, while there is a business opportunity we will cer- tainly capitalise on it and Shannon captitalizes on it better any airport that I know in the world in terms of friendliness and in terms of the serv- ice level we give the various carriers that operate that business.
Last December, the Minister for Justice, Brian Lenihan, confirmed that over €7 million had been spent on preventing Shannon Airport from incursions from anti-war activists over the previous two years.
This follows the estimated profit of €16.4 million made from the muili- tary traffic in 2006 and 2005.
Minister Lenihan confirmed that €4.69 million was spent on policing arrangements at Shannon last year. To the end of November this year, the costs are put at €3.1 million.