Madam, - It appears that W.J. Murphy (December 19th) could do with a geography lesson.
According to the AA website (which I'm sure is quite independent from Ryanair's PR machine), it is 204km from Dublin to Knock, and the estimated travel time on Ireland's dirt tracks is an incredible three hours and 20 minutes. On the other hand, it is 126km from Hahn Airport to Frankfurt, and the estimated travel time on Germany's excellent autobahn is 1 hour and 28 minutes. Hardly comparable distances and, more importantly, hardly comparable travel times.
Incidentally, even though it is only 20km from my house to Dublin airport, it has often taken me longer to get there than it would take to get from Frankfurt to Hahn. - Yours, etc,
JONATHAN BAUM, Dargle Road, Blackrock, Co Dublin.
Madam, - In response to the letter from W.J. Murphy (December 19th) there is nothing misleading about the name of Frankfurt Hahn airport. It is not Ryanair, but Iata (the International Air Transport Association) which has designated Hahn as a Frankfurt airport. It does so by following exactly the same process that designated Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton as London airports.
The fact that Hahn is the cheapest gateway to Frankfurt has made it the airport of choice for almost 4 million passengers this year and by 2012 it will be the airport of choice for over 10 million people who wish to travel to Frankfurt on low cost, on-time flights without the delays and expense of accessing Frankfurt main airport. Even Mr Murphy might accept that 10 million passengers (a year) could not be misled? - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL CAWLEY, Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Chief Executive, Ryanair, Dublin Airport.