A chara, – I was bemused to read of Aer Lingus’s new Newcastle-Dublin service (Business, August 19th), particularly the claim “The Newcastle-Dublin route will facilitate connections to Aer Lingus mainline services to the US for passengers in the north east of England. Newcastle-based passengers can connect to some of the main US and Canadian cities – New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Orlando and Toronto – via Dublin.”
In my job as a festival producer in Cork city I have had to arrange scores of transatlantic flights over the years; but because there is no connection between Cork and Dublin airports I must fly North Americans into Cork via Heathrow or Schiphol. It makes no sense for me to fly someone out of Shannon or Dublin airports when they would face an overland commute of several hours instead of 15 minutes to Cork airport.
Aer Lingus must be passing up millions in euro every year because customers in the south are forced to fly British Airways or KLM. While the State still has shares in Aer Lingus, as a citizen shareholder I find this situation less than acceptable, particularly when most of the flights I purchase as an arts professional are with Government-sourced money. – Yours, etc,
PATRICK COTTER,
Artistic Director,
The Munster Literature
Centre,
Douglas Street,
Cork.