Shannon flying unfettered

SHANNON Airport is now self-sustaining and is not receiving ongoing State support to ease it into independence, according to its chairperson, Rose Hynes.
Speaking last Friday when United Airlines seasonal Shannon-Chicago service was launched, she was adamant the State is not providing more funding to prop up Shannon on an ongoing basis. “No, absolutely not. The airport is on its own, its an independent airport, it has to work to make its own way, that’s the way things are.”
Continuing, Ms Hynes said Shannon “has its own facilities, its own operations, it’s independent, it’s self sustaining, that’s the way it was always intended, that’s the way it is. It’s independent.”
Asked if the airport will move back into the black this year, after several years of running at a loss, Ms Hynes said, “This year we expect that we will turn things around. I’m not saying any more than that.”
Shannon had just 1.4 million passengers in 2012, the lowest number since the 1980s. While Ms Hynes said she expects the rot to stop this year in terms of falling passenger numbers, she was reluctant to be specific about what type of increase can be expected.
“We’re not giving projections, we’re projecting we’re going to grow the passenger numbers.”
Shannon Airport is due to be merged with Shannon Development, creating a new entity that will draw funds from the millions currently raised in rents by the development company.
However, progress on this merger has been slow and while Transport Minister Leo Varadkar has said he expects the relevant legislation to pass in the autumn, Ms Hynes says the full process won’t be complete for some months afterwards.
She expects it will be before 2014 however. “Once the legislation happens then there’s going to be time for working it through with the reconstituted Shannon Development, so I’d say it’ll be some months after that; by year’s end.”
While she refused to identify any specific routes, she said Shannon is in talks regarding new services.
“We have a lot of discussions underway at the moment – a lot. We’re expecting good news again soon, we’ve a lot of things underway at the moment, I just can’t tell how quickly we’ll pull it off.”
She is very confident the seasonal Chicago service will be a success.
“This is something that was top of our agenda for quite some time. We wanted to restore this flight for a number of reasons, the principal one is demand. There’s demand for this service. Chicago is a city of 2.7 million people, 9.7 million in its metropolitan area with the Irish the most populous group and that says a lot about the potential for this route.
“We haven’t had a Chicago route since 2009 but two years before that, in ’07, 110,000 people flew this route. There’s demand there, we just have to rekindle it. I’m convinced that we’re going to do that and that this route will be a success.”