THE obligation on Aer Lingus to serve Shannon-Heathrow expired last week, but on Wednesday the airline’s representatives said that the link is set to continue into the future.
Its representatives were before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communications on Wednesday and they also said they plan to continue with Boston and New York services from Shannon, but don’t plan to look at other destinations in the US.
Following a question from Clare TD Cathal Crowe, Aer Lingus Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Donal Moriarty says the Shannon-Heathrow route is doing well and will continue.
“The arrangement has elapsed, but we are still selling Shannon-London Heathrow, it’s doing well, all of our routes out of Shannon have performed well during the course of 2022 and we expect that to continue long into the future, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t.”
Although he said several times that the existing Aer Lingus flights at Shannon are doing well, Mr Moriarty said he didn’t expect it will add to them soon.
“We constantly review our route network and in Shannon we have Shannon to Boston, Heathrow and JFK, we would expect that to continue, we wouldn’t expect significant changes to our Shannon schedule for summer 2023 but that hasn’t been finally determined yet.”
Clare TD Joe Carey said that there has been a reduction in the number of Heathrow flights, and asked will that be rectified.
“We used to have three flights (to Heathrow each day), that’s only two now and has been for some time. Can you confirm that that third Heathrow service will be restored at the end of October?”
Responding, Mr Moriarty said, “I think it has been a mix of three times daily and two times daily over the course of the year, that’s my understanding.
“We haven’t launched or announced our summer service for next year, but our services out of Shannon for the winter period, winter 22/23 will be as they are now.”
Asked to clarify if it will be two or three services per day, he said, “There’s a mix of twice and three times daily depending on the day of the week and that will continue over the winter.”
Deputy Carey asked if services from Shannon to Paris and Barcelona that were set to commence until Covid-19 struck will now go ahead.
Mr Moriarty said they will not, with the airline having fewer suitable aircraft.
“Our short haul fleet has reduced since 2019; we had 37 short haul aircraft in 2019, for the course of this summer we had 31, we have just added two more, but we are still short four short haul aircraft versus 2019.”
He also said that it won’t run any more Shannon-US services.
“We don’t believe there are opportunities for other routes out of Shannon on transatlantic.”
In response to a question from Deputy Crowe, Mr Moriarty said that there will be no u-turn on the closure of the Shannon crew base, reiterating what he said at a previous appearance before the Committee.
“For similar reasons that I gave you on the last occasion that (the Shannon cabin crew base) will not be re-established.
“As I think I mentioned previously the decision to close the cabin crew base was taken primarily so the viability of the Shannon operations to Boston, New York and London Heathrow could be ensured.
“That, thankfully, has been the case since the resumption of transatlantic back in March, our services have operated very strongly and we’re very pleased with them. Similarly London-Heathrow, but we will not be looking at putting back our cabin crew base in Shannon.”
He also said that there had been no compulsory redundancies, including among the cabin crew who had been stationed at Shannon.
“We had the approach of retaining the employment of as many of our colleagues as possible. In fact less than 200 people left the business on voluntary severance during Covid, so quite a small number of people.
“In terms of the Shannon cabin crew base, the 90 staff located there were offered three choices, to relocate to Dublin, to Cork, or voluntary severance. All of their individual choices were accommodated, there was no one forced to take any particular choice. There was no compulsory redundancy in Aer Lingus throughout Covid at all.”
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked with a number of other publications in Limerick, Cork and Galway. His first book will be published in December 2024.