Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 18 September 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

Aviation Trends, Air Traffic Control and Drone Activity: Discussion

1:30 pm

Mr. Philip Hughes:

They might, but in a market that is saturated, people are looking for the way to get passengers to their destinations more quickly. For argument's sake, fuel might be 20% of the cost and ATC charges might only be 5%. To be fair, the airlines are incredibly sophisticated with their client management systems. They might say that if they go that way, while it might be a little more expensive, it will get them to the point. This comes back to flight discipline, which we say we need to maintain. Even though we can see there is a smarter way to try to do this, the knock-on effect might not be good. It is a very dynamic situation in the context of how it is evolving.