Dáil debates

Tuesday, 13 October 2009

12:00 pm

Photo of Pat BreenPat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)

These are testing times for Aer Lingus and its staff, especially those based at Shannon Airport. The airline's lamp is burning through its cash reserves faster than it can refill them and by the end of the year its cash reserves are expected to be down to €400 million from €803 million in 2008. Some of the airline management's decisions in recent years have been questionable and have left the airline in a precarious position. It has spent €180 million cash on the purchase of two Airbus aircraft and has also been a casualty of fuel hedging. In addition, while it claims that this reduction in cash reserves is due to a combination of reduced sales and high staff costs, I understand it is due to save up to €55 million a year in staff costs from January 2010 as a result of cost savings agreed with staff in the last restructuring plan.

Unfortunately, Aer Lingus staff at Shannon and the people of the mid-west will once again pay the greatest price for these bad decisions. Aer Lingus has been continually undermining and downgrading its Shannon operation for several years. It now plans to shed 102 cabin crew jobs at Shannon which will have serious implications for future transatlantic services at the airport. Aer Lingus has failed to sign up to use the new state-of-the-art US pre-clearance facility and there is no reason Aer Lingus cannot negotiate an agreement with the US port authorities which would facilitate their Shannon passengers. It flies into terminal four in New York which has a domestic baggage claim area used by Delta, Northwest and Virgin America operating domestic services and the situation in Boston is similar with a domestic baggage claim area available which is used by Southwest for its domestic routes.

Its US advertising campaigns are tilted in favour of Dublin Airport as the two most recent campaigns testify. It now plans to reduce the New York EI 111 service from Shannon to a thrice-weekly flight. Bookings for the Shannon-New York service to the end of March 2010 are well ahead of bookings on the EI 105 Dublin-JFK service but I am amazed that the airline plans to operate its Shannon service on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays two of which days have traditionally been poor for bookings on the New York route. I believe the airline is intentionally running down the Shannon operation to show that the Shannon service underperforms against the Dublin one. I have constantly pointed out the need for the airline to review the timing of its Shannon flight. EI 111 should depart at 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock in the morning which would allow the airline to compete for the 30,000 passengers who travelled with Delta Airlines last winter which is not operating from Shannon this winter.

I hope the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, Deputy Moloney, will tell the Minister for Transport that what is needed now is an urgent meeting with Christoph Mueller who has not had sufficient time to make himself au fait with the Shannon situation and I am calling on the Minister to arrange this meeting. The Government has a 25% shareholding in Aer Lingus and has appointed directors to the company. The Minister must have learned lessons from the Shannon-Heathrow debacle last year and I urge him to act and arrange this meeting immediately.

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