"I suspect that the reason why MOL is determined to have hangar 6 and no other hangar has less to do with the hangar inself than with the large amount of office accommodation attached to it. When the Ryanair HQ building was erected in 1991, MOL persuaded Aer Rianta (as the DAA was then) to provide the land rent free for twenty years. So, at the end of this year, FR will have to start paying rent to the DAA for the land on which their HQ stands. Obvoiusly, this would not sit well with the pay for nothing philosophy of MOL. When he realised that he had missed a glorious opportunity to avoid paying this rent and leaving the DAA with a building for which they have no use and no likely tenants he set about using the unfortunate redundant SRT workers as hostages to pressurise the Govt., the DAA, the IDA, Aer Lingus and the opposition parties into handing hangar 6 over to him and providing him with a new free HQ building. It has more accommodation than his Present HQ. He missed the boat last year but his current campaign is very well planned and orchestrated using all his usual mouthpieces such as the Sindo/Indo and the "aviation expert" JG of B...... Stockbrokers. If he gets it he may very well employ 300 ex-SRT engineers but it will not be long before the blackmail starts again and he he is threatening to move all the work to some lower cost overseas alternative unless the govt. and the DAA give him the devil and all. And it should not be forgotten that Aer Lingus has already employed a large number of ex-SRT engineers for its new Line Maintenance Operation."
At last, a viable theory. This whole story had me wondering from the start as to what MOL/FR were
really after. Listening to the various radio interviews, MOL seemed to come unstuck on the issue of being offered a new build hangar vs H6, the above explanation would cast some light on the possible reasons for this.
In fairness, he picked the weakest link in targeting the Gov. 2IC. (lovely person but waaay out of her ability zone) That the opposition rowed in is no suprise but I'm suprised the Unions weren't a bit more savvy before they offered support on his behalf - inquiring about T&C in advance of pitching in might not have been a bad move...
Anyway, won't happen, FR will move their MX somewhere that will subsidise it, causing the max political/DAA damage they can in the meantime.
Really tough on the guys that had their hopes raised (blame FR on raising a never possible scenario) but probably the best outcome in terms of long term investment integrity.
IMHO
