Watchdog to probe airline over delays

IRELAND’S airlines watchdog launched an investigation yesterday into a Shannon-based charter airline blamed for chronic delays at Cork Airport over the weekend.

A spokesperson for the Commissioner for Aviation Regulation in Ireland said his office would carry out a full review of Eirjet’s operations after hundreds of passengers were stranded at the airport for up to 24 hours.

The investigation was launched after a complaint was lodged against Eirjet by Cork Fianna Fáil TD Noel O’Flynn. Eirjet was blamed yesterday for a 24-hour delay to a Falcon Holidays flight to Malaga.

The flight with 170 passengers on board was due to depart Cork at 8.10am on Sunday morning. It didn’t get off the ground until 9.30am yesterday.

Eirjet suffered another 24-hour delay last Thursday with a Lanzarote-bound flight. More Eirjet flights were affected the previous weekend from Cork and Shannon.

Mr O’Flynn, chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, said the regulator must ensure the airline is meeting its licensing requirements.

It is understood Eirjet, which launched last December with the deal to operate all Falcon JWT’s charter flights from Cork and Shannon, leases just three Airbus A320 aircraft.

Two are based in Dublin and one in Shannon.

Mr O’Flynn, who was at Cork Airport on Sunday night, said: “I am concerned about the resources this airline has - whether they have enough aircraft to do work they have been contracted to do.”

Eirjet MD Paul Schultz was unavailable for comment yesterday.

A shortage of aircraft, technical problems, weather conditions and airport opening times have all been blamed for passengers being left stranded at airports in Cork and Shannon as well as at Malaga in the south of Spain, Lanzarote, Greece and Turkey over the weekend.

The Shannon to Malaga service, which was due to leave Shannon at 6.05pm on Sunday, was also cancelled. Passengers who spent more than six hours at Shannon were only told at 10.30pm that there was no aircraft to take them to Malaga and that they would be accommodated in local hotels in the Shannon area on Sunday night.

Falcon Holidays has apologised to customers for the “severity and number of delays experienced over the past few days with chartered airline, Eirjet, who operate a number of flights on our behalf. We carry hundreds of thousands of customers each year and at all times our priority is to ensure that our customers get to and from their holiday destination safely and on time,” a spokesperson said.

“This unprecedented and unfortunate catalogue of events which resulted in these long delays centred around exceptional weather conditions (fog) at critical times in the flight operational programme with Eirjet. The impact of such weather conditions at Cork Airport was further compounded by overseas airport operational times and some technical issues. A number of overseas airports including Arrecife in Lanzarote close at night, so flights cannot land until they reopen,” a statement said.