Slow take-off for Shannon pre-clearance

SHANNON’S US Customs and Border Protection pre-clearance (CBP) facility opened last August to great fanfare.

However, 12 months on it hasn’t delivered the hoped-for boost to Clare, it has been claimed by a leading tourism figure this week.
Michael Vaughan, chairman of the Irish Hotels Federation (IHF) Shannon branch, said he felt that pre-clearance hadn’t been adequately marketed and as a result hasn’t fulfilled its potential.
“It’d be fair to say that it hasn’t delivered anything like the potential we envisaged it having.
“There has been relatively little marketing of it and that has been a big, big failing.”
He said that significant funding had been sought and was needed to promote pre-clearance but it hadn’t been received.
The failure to get the word out had been costly, Mr Vaughan added.
“It’s a bit like building the best hotel in the world but not telling anyone that it’s opened.”
Mr Vaughan said that going back to the time of the Rainbow Coalition in the 1990s, the federation had been seeking money to promote Shannon, something that he feels still hasn’t been done very effectively.
He said that with the arrival of pre-clearance in 2009, there had been a chance to attract significant new business.
“We expected Shannon Airport would begin to grow as a hub for certain transatlantic services, particularly from Eastern Europe and Russia.
“We thought it would be seen as a viable refuelling stop and that there would be a chance to revive old links. It’s also something that could be attractive to US carriers that could bring people through the pre-clearance facility and then fly on to domestic terminals in the US.”
Mr Vaughan said that while British Airways had been pleased with the pre-clearance facility, which they use as part of a London-New York service, their experience wasn’t widely known in aviation circles.
Tony Mulcahy was Mayor of Clare when the facility was opened last summer.
This week, he ­acknowledged that there is a need for more marketing of the pre-clearance facility but said that airlines are using it and that patience is needed.
“I’d be an advocate of Brian O’Connell (chairman of Shannon Airport Authority) and I believe it will be a slow process but business will open up. Getting airlines to sign up for it is a big project.”
Councillor Mulcahy also criticised the €10 air travel tax, which he said was “a crazy imposition”.
Shannon Airport director Martin Moroney said that the air travel industry had been weak since the facility opened and that a longer time frame was needed to judge its success.
“We are already seeing the benefits of CBP in terms of new and expanded services using Shannon but a facility like this must be judged over the longer term, rather than on just 12 months of operation, particularly during a major downturn in global aviation,” he said.
He added that there had already been some good successes.
“In terms of new business, British Airways’ business class only service from London City to JFK, which stops at Shannon for CBP and refuelling on the outward leg, has been highly successful.
“BA chief executive Willie Walsh has said publicly that the airline is looking to expand its US services from London City and that would deliver additional business for Shannon.
“The availability of CBP has also helped expand some existing business as Continental added four extra flights per week to its summer schedule and Delta is now offering a year-round service from Shannon.
“International gates are typically congested at major US hubs and the ability to land a Shannon flight at a domestic gate makes Shannon a much more viable option for airlines.”
While cutbacks in European flights rather than transatlantic might be the reason, Irish Aviation Authority figures show the scale of the problems at Shannon.
Commercial traffic movements at the airport in July were 28% down on the same month last year. While there were 2,591 movements there in July 2009, this dipped to 1,865 last month.
For the year so far, there has been roughly a 37% drop in commercial traffic ­movements, from 16,888 to 10,656.