Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Senator Terry Brennan referred to the difference in the price of flights in the SkyTeam arrangement with Air France, KLM and Delta Airlines. Yesterday morning I had a constituent from Ennis in my office. As his son is based in San Francisco, he has used the Dublin-San Francisco service on several occasions and been very pleased with the service. When he was booking flights in May, he searched that service, as well as British Airways direct flights to and from Heathrow Airport, backtracking to Shannon Airport. For a family of five, there was a difference of €2,000 between British Airways and Aer Lingus.

Aer Lingus operates two Boeing 757s on contract from Air Contractors in Shannon Airport. How long is the lease for these two aircraft? While we welcome this good service, what is to stop IAG, if it takes over Aer Lingus, from competing with the Dublin transatlantic service with much lower prices on London Heathrow transatlantic routes to the west coast and mid-west of the United States?

An airline can be blown out of business very quickly, as happened in competition with Ryanair in certain areas. If there is a €2,000 difference, is that not a great excuse to keep getting cheaper flights into Heathrow and backtrack people into Ireland? As a marketing ploy, the transatlantic Aer Lingus service could be easily blown off the map in a strategic way if that was wanted, particularly if just two leased aircraft from air contractors are being used. I want to know how long is the lease on those.

When those two services were launched to Boston and New York, they were supposed to be 365 days a year. We now find they are not because the route is gone from January to March, I think. Why is that the case after the promise we got?