Mr. Stephen Kavanagh:

Quite a few influential people arrive on the charter from New York so hopefully their prayers will be of assistance. We enjoy working with the team at Knock airport and we were very interested in the opportunity to test the market for a service from New York. The basic proposition is that we are in business to grow the business. If demand between the US or Canada and Knock can be demonstrated we are open to servicing it. I think, however, that any such demand would be on a fairly low scale and would be primarily seasonal, as was the case with the previous operator.

Our preference for a charter in this instance would be for somebody else to share some of the revenue risk. In the case of a charter, a number of travel agents or committed parties commit to taking blocks of seats - a far less risky proposition than an airline independently attempting to sell 177 seats itself. It is a market test and we will learn some things. The scale from which we have benefited as a result of growth in the past number of years, including the addition of the Boeing 757 to our fleet to complement the wide-body A330s, gives us a greater capacity to trial and compete for business of this kind. Let us see how it goes. It was peak summer, it involved competing for very scarce aircraft resources and it won. We are cautiously optimistic that it can be repeated. It is a seasonal opportunity, though, and not even close to being a daily one, but it could deliver a service to Knock airport that did not previously exist. We are here to grow the level of opportunity for Aer Lingus and, by default, for all the regions of Ireland.