SHANNON AIRPORT Authority (SAA) confirmed last night it will not be entering a new five-year deal with Ryanair because of its unreasonable demands, while the airline’s spokesman said the impact of the pull-out would be the loss of 150 Ryanair jobs.
The existing five-year deal is due to expire next April and Ryanair is demanding an end to the Government’s €10 travel tax and a 50 per cent reduction in its costs at Shannon for the deal to the renewed.
Last year, Ryanair’s 1.85 million passengers in and out of Shannon accounted for 60 per cent of the airport’s overall passenger numbers and the airline’s importance to Shannon has increased as transatlantic numbers have reduced.
The impact of a Ryanair pull-out could reduce passenger numbers at Shannon from a 2007 high of 3.6 million to around 1.25 million a year if a replacement carrier is not identified.
However, director of the SAA, Martin Moroney said yesterday that Shannon “cannot accede to Ryanair’s unreasonable demands and will therefore not be entering into another five-year agreement with the airline”.
Mr Moroney said that “the airport has been keen to arrive at a further agreement with Ryanair; however this had proved impossible as the airline’s current demands were unrealistic”.
According to the SAA, in the new deal Ryanair has offered to deliver only 600,000 annual passengers at Shannon.
A spokesman for the SAA said: “Even with such drastically reduced throughput, Ryanair made a number of additional demands, some of which are actually outside the control of Shannon.” Mr Moroney said it was impossible to come to a mutually beneficial agreement with the airline, because its unreasonable demands were non-negotiable.
Mr Moroney added that while the current economic climate remains difficult, Shannon airport would continue to work with all airlines to deliver commercially viable routes to the region.
Last night, a Ryanair spokesman rejected Shannon’s “false claims” that Ryanair’s terms were “unrealistic”. He said: “Ryanair had offered Shannon better cost terms than are presently being offered to Ryanair by many other lower cost airports in better destinations all over Europe.”
He added: “The combination of the Government’s tourist tax and the DAA’s airport charges now makes Shannon uncompetitive. Since Shannon has rejected Ryanair’s offer the airline will proceed to cut its based aircraft in Shannon next summer by 75 per cent (from four to one) aircraft with the loss of 150 Ryanair jobs and a loss of 1.5m Ryanair passengers in Shannon.”
