IRELAND OFFERS AVIATION LEASING AND MORE TO INDIA
Pat Breen, Minister of State for Employment and Small Business, Ireland
Jayant Baranwal ( JB): Could you tell us how Ireland has reached the peak in aviation and in how much time? Pat Breen (Breen): Ireland being an island nation, there are only two ways to get out, either by air or by sea. Our geographic location is such, the most westerly country in Europe, airlines en route to Europe have to stop by. Airlines in the early days stopped off in Ireland en route to Europe. Of course, the early pioneers also stopped in Ireland, as in the first Trans Atlantic flight crossed to Europe. Our history of being pioneer in aviation is something special to us. Our airports started gathering momentum in Dublin, Shannon, Cork airports. So I suppose this has come from a number of entrepreneurs and pioneers in aviation and I go back to somebody like Dr Tony Ryan who started off Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA). And then there is the growth of Aer Lingus, our national carrier. So we had a lot of expertise and entrepreneurs working with GPA. At one time in the 1980s, GPA was the largest leasing company of aircraft in the world.
Back in the 1970s, flying and aviation was quite expensive and Dr Ryan had the vision to start this company and he was joined by a number of very dynamic and young people who wanted to excel themselves in the aviation sector, people like Michael O’Leary who founded Ryan air. Out of Guinness Peat Aviation came Ryan Air which was called after Dr Tony Ryan. Of course, Ryan Air started as a very low-cost airline, based on the South-Eastern model in the US. Low-cost was very new at that time, a lot of the traditional airlines had their cartel charging whatever they liked. In those years, to cross to the UK it used to cost 400 pounds, today you can get it for as little as 20 pounds each way that is what has happened with competition.
That is how low-cost carriers have made a big difference to us and that model was copied by carriers in Europe. So where are we now? The Irish aviation business is at a very strong point, strong not just in leasing. We lease over half the aircraft in the world from companies like GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS), Aercap and various other smaller leasing companies and of course Avolon which had Domhnal Slattery, a very good friend of mine from my own county who was the CEO. The tradition was there, the entrepreneurship was there. Our other area of expertise has been in the maintenance of aircraft and painting of liveries. We have Shannon MRO, Shannon Aerospace and they are doing extremely well. We have got very good skilled workers. We get aircraft from all over the world, for maintenance and painting livery. Qatar Airways, American Airlines among others get work done here.
At the moment the aviation sector is going through a transition. We have Patrick from Shannon Airport Authority on this delegation. We have made that airport independent. It operates on its own. Shannon airport had the first duty free shop in the world; the first Irish coffee was made at the airport; and the first custom free zone in the world is here. From this point of view it makes us experts in aviation. Aer Lingus is now part of the International Airlines Group. We are a small country it is difficult for a national carrier to survive, so Aer Lingus merged. In the 1990s and 2000, there were mergers and consolidation of Lufthansa, AFI, KLM, Aer Lingus, etc, with different groups.