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Shannon revives the lost art of letter-writing
Read more about: Connaught-Ulster, End of Shannon-Heathrow, Fine Gael, Government, Munster, Northern Ireland, Transport, Travel & Tourism
A day after Michael O’Leary’s letter to the government proposing a joint call for Aer Lingus to retain its Heathrow service from Shannon, Michael Noonan TD puts pen to paper to write an actual letter to Willie Walsh, British Airways chief executive, to ask him to consider a Shannon-Heathrow service. Does this move the ball forward?
It definitely shows the extent to which politicians — apparently correctly — judge the media to be process-driven. Somehow Tony Killeen managed to dominate RTE’s reporting on Monday about the end of the Shannon-Heathrow link, despite being a TD for the government whose policies set this whole affair in motion. So Noonan figures that with the stunt of writing a letter, he can get coverage, which he did.
On the serious side, the episode shows the need for an All-Islands approach to certain issues — Britain and Ireland. Heathrow is outside the jurisdiction but is still the main gateway airport for most long-haul journeys from Ireland. Very hard to run a business with links to Africa or Asia without a connector to Heathrow, as Shannon businesses now face.
One obvious problem with Noonan’s proposal is that if BA thought that Shannon-Heathrow was viable, they’d already be doing it. Then again, BA didn’t think that Belfast-Heathrow was viable, but Aer Lingus happily steps into the breach. And BA would face the same calculation as Aer Lingus did — do they want to use precious Heathrow slots for service to a low density area?
Anyway, even if BA doesn’t come, the outlines of what Shannon would need are clear enough. It can’t just be a flight to somewhere in London. It has to be Heathrow for the onward connections. And ideally, it has to be a codeshare. There’s enough Heathrow hassle already without 2 check-ins or multiple tickets for one trip. BA is the dominant airline at Heathrow. Would they grant codeshare rights to an airline other than Aer Lingus? In principle they’ll only codeshare with an alliance partner but BA does codeshare with flybe on some flights, and there’s at least one case where they have a de facto codeshare with commercial rival BMI (for passengers connecting in London to BMI’s flight to Riyadh, a service that BA ended a couple of years ago).
If the emerging Shannon lobby group is to be effective, they’ll need to avoid classic distraction politics (e.g. a claim that such and such an airline will add Shannon-Gatwick) and keep their eye on the ball: multiple daily services as codeshares with a major airline alliance to Heathrow Airport.
Is anyone going to start a Shane Ross Eircom style campaign and try to gather enough votes to oust Mannion and his cronies at the next AGM. If there was a serious effort then the local TDs would have to row in behind it. Ryanair would love the stunt factor of ousting the CEO of a rival. The Unions increasingly hate his guts so they would be on board. Enough momentum could be gathered that the government would have to join in.
Mannion’s decision to sell the Shannon slots to the highest bidder (forget about the smokescreen of moving them to Belfast) may cost hundreds in the mid west their jobs. It’s only fair that his is among the first to go.
There should be some form of campaign, those slots were left with Aer Lingus in order to facilitate flag carriers at a time when they were flag carriers. Now they have been left off the leash with little or no government say in decision making.
The idea that those slots, which are a necessary public service to link to the best connected airport in the world, are to become movable feasts to help balance sheets is exactly what bertie wanted to avoid, or at least said he did, at privatisation time.
This move is ridiculous as it casts the whole limerick, clare, connacht and north-west in hoc to either dublin, cork or belfast.