CITYJET’S PLANS to offload the Dublin-Knock public service obligation (PSO) contract to Scottish airline Highland Airways could hit some significant turbulence in the form of Ryanair.
At a press conference in Dublin yesterday, Michael O’Leary revealed that Ryanair wrote to the Department of Transport on July 7th offering to take over the PSO contract from CityJet.
“We still haven’t had a reply,” O’Leary said yesterday. Ryanair wrote a “reminder” to the department on August 7th but still heard nothing.
“We’re still waiting for a reply from those half-wits in the department,” he added.
Ryanair already operates the PSO contract for Dublin-Kerry, at a cost of €4.5 million, which O’Leary said is pure profit for the budget airline.
The Knock contract is worth a tasty €4.8 million over three years. The route has been without an operator since July 22nd, when the latest contract was supposed to take off.
CityJet pulled out due to a shortage of aircraft. It had hoped to use aircraft from VLM, a regional airline it has agreed to buy. That deal, however, awaits clearance from the UK’s competition regulator.
CityJet has since proposed that Highland takes over the PSO contract. It is understood that Highland applied to operate the route when the PSO contracts were out to tender earlier this year, but its bid was received late and wasn’t considered by the department.
The department is remaining tight-lipped on what it plans to do, perhaps awaiting the return of Minister Noel Dempsey from his holidays.
With every Government department looking to save a few bob, and more than two airlines interested in the contract, surely the best move would be to put the contract out to tender again.
