‘Do hard work yourself,’ Walsh tells Shannon Airport
SHANNON Airport has a viable future as a seasonal transatlantic gateway and should stop “demanding that everyone else does the hard work for them”, Willie Walsh says.
“They need to get on and manage it,” the IAG CEO said. “They need to do it themselves.”
Mr Walsh – whose group owns Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia, Vueling and Level – is optimistic that transatlantic services at the west of Ireland airport can grow.
But Shannon will never be a hub. That, he said, “is never going to happen”.
“There’s always demand for transatlantic services into the west of Ireland,” he said. “The demand is very seasonal, but it’s always been very seasonal.”
In 2012 Shannon Airport split from DAA, which operates the Dublin and Cork airports. Shannon had pressed the government for the split, arguing it would have a stronger future as an independent entity, and set a target of handling 2.5 million passengers a year.
It has fallen far short of that aim, as 1.86 million used Shannon last year chiefly for UK and European routes and summer links to US cities including Boston and New York.
Shannon complained last month that a €9.7m mandatory upgrade of its baggage screening systems to adhere to international standards would impose “a material financial burden” on the airport. Unlike privately owned airports such as Knock, it argued, Shannon had not received confirmation of any Government financial support for the cost.
Mr Walsh said Shannon shouldn’t expect “someone else to pay the bills to do the basics for them. They just need to focus on making what they have as effective as possible”.
A Limerick Chamber-commissioned report by Copenhagen Economics this month found that Dublin’s dominance made it tough for other airports to maintain current route and passenger levels.
But Shannon could get help from Budget 2020, which included a €2.5m competitive route development fund.
Limerick Chamber president Eoin Ryan welcomed the fund as “a very important moment for balanced regional development” and said it was “now up to Shannon and other airports to make a compelling case”.