THERE is “huge potential” for Shannon Airport to ease pressure from Dublin with the highly contentious cap of passenger numbers there.
That’s according to Mary Considine, CEO of the Shannon Airport Group, who was speaking at the launch of Ryanair’s winter schedule at the airport this week.
Ryanair this week launched their winter schedule at Shannon Airport, and are continuing to call on the Government to lift the cap on passengers at Dublin Airport immediately, which currently sits at 32 million passengers per year.
However, speaking to the Limerick Post, Ms Considine said that Shannon Airport could be part of the solution for passenger caps in Ireland.
“We’re talking to our airline partners every week, what we’re saying to them is there’s a huge potential here for Shannon Airport to be part of the solution for the country. And I think the Minister (James Lawless) put it really well, he said, there’s no cap in the airports outside of Dublin. There’s underutilised capacity, and this will be really good for the country because it will align people closer to where they want to go, or where they’re traveling from, and at the same time, alleviate congestion in Dublin Airport,” she said.
Ms Considine added that “this is a solution, and I think it’s also good for the country because it will rebalance aviation. We have a significant over reliance on Dublin Airport, huge pressure on the infrastructure up there when we’re not using the infrastructure around the country to its maximum. So this is a potential to address that.
Ryanair have said that if the passenger cap in Dublin Airport is lifted, they will also increase their investment in Shannon Airport, doubling their fleet at the Mid West airport.
Speaking to this reporter, Ryanair’s head of communications Jade Kirwan said that the company are committed to investing in Shannon.
“We’re down here announcing 17 routes for winter, which is a very large winter schedule. We’ve put extra flights in five other routes as well. So encouraging business travel, encouraging winter sun, holiday destinations and city breaks as well … So we are growing here.
“We’re up 31 per cent on pre Covid levels, which is phenomenal, considering a lot of other airports are actually behind on their pre Covid levels across Europe. And so we do have very ambitious plans here for Shannon, I suppose, the difference being that it is a little bit slower to stimulate that demand,” Ms Kirwan said.
The airline have announced that they will fly to 17 routes this winter from Shannon including Budapest, Edinburgh, Krakow, Liverpool, London, Lanzarote, Malaga and Tenerife.
