This article is from page 4 of the 2008-07-22 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 4 JPG
THE chief executive of Aer Lingus has confirmed that he cannot give any absolute guarantees to Shannon in relation to the future of transatlan- tic services.
Addressing the Dail’s Transport
Committee, Dermot Mannion stated, “On the question of whether we can give an absolute guarantee to Shan- non in regard to long-haul services, the honest answer is “No”, just as we cannot give a guarantee to Dublin on long-haul services or to Belfast or any other place on short-haul serv-
ices.
“We must make decisions that are commercially focused. To put it mildly, we are very aware of the so- cio-economic factors associated with long-haul routes, especially given the loyalty of the Irish-American com- munity in the United States to the
Shannon route. We are very aware of that and it will weigh heavily on our deliberations on the Shannon routes, as it will on other long-haul routes.”
Mr Mannion ruled out for the mo- ment any plans for a direct service from Shannon to Chicago.
On the Shannon-Heathrow contro- versy, he said, “I regret the damage caused to our reputation in the Shan- non area during three or four months of last year. I would say, and Deputy Timmy Dooley acknowledged it, that a huge effort has gone in recently to rebuilding confidence, rebuilding the reputation of the Aer Lingus brand at Shannon and, although it is early days, we are beginning to see some positive effect from that.
Mr Mannion said that “we have not ruled out future short-haul opera- tions from Shannon”.
“I can assure the committee that Shannon, and the potential of Shan- non routes, are given every consid- eration in those deliberations. The deployment of long and short-haul aircraft requires similar analyses to determine the optimal deployment between Shannon, Dublin and other potential destinations.
“Just as we deploy long-haul air- craft we are doing a similar exercise in terms of determining the optimal deployment between Shannon, Dub- lin and other potential destinations,” he said.