As stated earlier passengers and the market decides which airport they will use and Knock despite all the "negatives " being portrayed here by some contributors defies the critics with strong growth .
I wonder why?
On the state aid issue mgt at the airport are on the record stating that it received €15m of the €27m approved under T21 before the shutters came down, and matched this with another €15m of airport money to carry out the terminal upgrade, ILS CAT 11, RESA etc.
This compares with €1.6 billion yes billon spent by the state owned DAA on the 3 state airports or 100 times what was granted to Knock. And as part of this €160 million was spent on the terminal and US border post in Shannon, or more than 10 times what was spent in Knock in the same period. To further compound this gov has now decided to bail out Shannon further with another €300m to ensure its survival .....and pay Knock lip service and tell them as recently quoted by minister Varadkar on mid west radio that its a "model airport" and that he uses it as an example to other airports on how they should run their business....if only this was true and gov would take on the DAA and now SAA monopoly in regard to running of airports. At the end of the day gov will ultimate decide on what happens Knock through aviation policy and mgt can only do what it can to try and present the facts to the region it serves