MICHAEL CAWLEY,
Madam, - I read in your edition of February 28th that the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Mr Dermot Ahern, missed a meeting with the Fisheries Commissioner in Brussels because his scheduled Aer Lingus flight was initially delayed and subsequently cancelled.
It may come as a surprise to the Minister's officials who have singularly refused to fly with any airline other than Aer Lingus that Ryanair's punctuality is the best in Europe and that our number of bags lost and complaints per thousand passengers flown is also the best. For example 93 per cent of our flights on the Dublin-Brussels route in February were on time.
Ryanair is the only airline in Europe that publishes customer service statistics relating to punctuality, complaints per thousand passengers carried and numbers of lost bags per thousand carried, which we do on www.ryanair.com on a monthly basis. It is mandatory for every airline in the United States to file these statistics with the Department of Transportation on a monthly basis, but every other airline in Europe including Aer Lingus has resisted the urgings of the EU Commission to publish these voluntarily.
Ryanair carries more than 60 per cent of all the passengers between Dublin and Brussels and has done so for the past four years. Isn't it time for the Government and its officials to catch up with what the ordinary people have known for a long time? - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL CAWLEY,
Chief Operating Officer &
Deputy Chief Executive,
Ryanair,
Dublin Airport.