Mr. Willie Walsh:

The question I have is: what is Shannon Airport trying to achieve? If it is trying to achieve connections globally, and to do that over hub airports, first and foremost it must be recognised that hub airports compete with each other. Schiphol competes with Heathrow, Paris and Frankfurt airports. Shannon Airport has a connection over a global hub airport, namely, Heathrow. One must be careful that any measures taken to try to attract connections to another hub airport are additional and supplementary rather than competing. One does not want to put at risk the connectivity the airport already has. That happened previously. There were previously connections to Paris but they did not sustain, principally because they were not financially viable. Shannon Airport needs to be clear in terms of what it is trying to do. Is it trying to attract tourism, investment and business from the world or is it trying to attract it from certain parts of the world? It needs to define where it is we need that connectivity. One then pursues the connectivity. Just saying we want to connect over Schipol is not the correct approach. What will Schiphol give Shannon Airport that Heathrow does not give it? Schiphol used to have a much bigger network into China, but China is closed so that is currently of no value. Other than China, there were very limited options available at Schiphol that one could not get at Heathrow. Frankfurt Airport did the same in terms of a bigger network into China. Asia was better served from some of these hub airports than it was from Heathrow. Heathrow was growing its connectivity into China and was catching up in that regard prior to the pandemic. Shannon needs to be clear on what it is trying to do and from where is it trying to attract traffic, and then map out the best place to get that connectivity. Otherwise, as I stated, it can get more connectivity from Europe on a point-to-point basis. That is where there is a real opportunity. There are opportunities there, particularly in light of the increasing competition between low-cost carriers.