There are times, Guvnor, when I'm not sure if you're being serious or if you're setting out to wind people up.
"There's not much point in a country like Ireland having a long haul operation." Why not? We have as much need and as much right as any other country in Europe or anywhere else to develop new markets. You cannot compare airlines in central Europe with those in a peripheral economy, many of which have - for various good (or, in the case of the SNN stopover, bad) reasons - been forced to carry out government policy.
If the EU really wanted to do something useful, it would crack down on the Irish government on the issue of the US bilateral, which is holding up every other country in Europe; what have we heard on this recently? Not a dickie bird!
SN collapsed because it was monstrously inefficient and a perennial and perpetual basket case. How an airline could be based in the centre of Europe, with all the high revenue traffic potential from the EU gravy train and other agencies and not make a profit is beyond me. Yet EI never had this, and had the government working against it on its most lucrative routes and still managed a fairly good business.
Raas767, you say this is capitalism. Well, I'm all for it, but there comes a time when society has to take precedence over capitalism. When a crisis such as 9/11 takes place, governments should be in a position to protect the interests of their countries; EI is in the position its in largely because of government policies. Why shouldn't it be given a chance to recover? Why should our economy be placed in a precarious situation, purely in the name of some obscure and misplaced economic theory?
As for the proposed 734, I certainly hope it does go ahead and EI deserves no less and, since this will come out of the defence budget, it will not be subject to EU interference.