Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 17 February 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications

Proposed Sale of Aer Lingus: (Resumed) Aer Lingus and Stobart Air

5:00 pm

Mr. Stephen Kavanagh:

People who will share the revenue risk. The previous operator had a different business model and it made its commercial decisions. As I said, the commercial risk for us is much reduced if it a charter flight and the airline does not have the sole responsibility of selling all the seats. That is analogous to what tour operators and travel agents did in the past where they block-booked seats to the Mediterranean destinations. It increases the confidence of the airlines in terms of their revenue generation. We do not have the level of market intelligence that the team at Knock airport has in terms of those parties that might be interested in flights for pilgrimage groups or for those attending special events. We are quite happy to partner in that regard but we are simply not equipped to take the commercial risk and responsibility of selling seats at Aer Lingus risk, but we are quite happy to have a dialogue with all those parties interested in building air routes between Knock and North America in that context.