Ryanair at Shannon
I have been reading that last 2 interesting posts by iwhak and ryan2000 and alot of it is very real, ie I can see that FR dictating the pace at SNN.
In my opinion, I do hope that the deal that FR gets is not scrutinised too closely by anyone as if penalties were imposed on FR for claiming to big of financial support, then it could be disasterous for SNN and the area, ie FR would and could in an instant reduce flights.
While I agree that FR dropping route signs the end of the potential of any route in the future or attracting any other carriers to it, I do think that without FR many of the routes operated would not have seen the light of day.
Aer Lingus never made any effort to fly directly to the continent, i was looking at some old Aer Lingus timetables for the 80s and 90s!!(yeah sad I know!) and the best they ever offered was once of twice a week to CDG and little else. They never did anything to the UK other than LHR.(certainly in the 90s). I mean in the 90s a flight was launched by BA Cityexpress or some similar guise to MAN. And prior to that it had been many a year before that was operated.
I realise that times economically and socially have changed, but I believe that without FR SNN would be a lot worse off, even if FR are running the whole show.
As regards AF doing well, its early days to call that. I believe that, the numbers lost on LHR have been displaced to ORK ( Feb ORK LHR up about 6k) and FR Shannon London numbers are up significantly to cover the void left by EI. So its hard to know where AF are getting the number from?
Does anyone know what the stats for FEB are?
AF came in with the hope of capturing the PAX who used EI to LHR to Tranfer onto other flights( connections).
EI said they carried 363k pax on SNN LHR per year and 20% they said were tranfer pax, therefore about 73k pax per year would be using LHR as a transfer point, and in reality a proportion of them would be going to the US, (who could alternatively use SNN US services).
If EI had an extra 6k pax in FEB on ORK LHR and if we assume that these were all would be SNN LHR pax in ordinary circumstances then in a year that would be 72k pax per year.Do the maths!
I dont believe that AF will attract much attention from FR as FR wont worry one bit, and the grant available must not be that much as if it were bmi/ba would have jumped at it to reinstate the LHR flight.
What does anyone else think?