Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 19 May 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

Issues Affecting the Aviation Sector: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Willie Walsh:

It is a great question. I know from my experience of working with Aer Lingus, the establishment of services to new destinations such as Seattle, San Francisco, which were building up, led to significant volumes of people travelling to Ireland on business. Those destinations take time to mature to a point where they are financially viable. Given that the Aer Lingus transatlantic fleet will be a smaller fleet, it means that some of those destinations will not be served for some time to come. That clearly must have an impact on foreign direct investment because having connectivity is very important. While the technology we are using this afternoon is great and enables us to do things, it is nowhere near as good as having face-to-face communication. I do not buy into the idea that all business will now be done over Zoom, Teams or something else because the quality of interaction is nowhere near as good as when people are sitting in the same room.

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