Airport job losses as flights cut back

TWENTY of the 65 staff at Kerry Airport are to lose their jobs in the wake of controversial cuts in services by Ryanair on the government-backed Kerry to Dublin route.

Redundancies are due to take effect on February 4 and will mainly affect ground crew and customer services personnel.

The workers were informed of the situation by management at a meeting on Tuesday afternoon and SIPTU is to meet the company on Tuesday next.

In a statement yesterday, Kerry Airport chairman Denis Cregan said the redundancies were necessary to safeguard the business in the medium term and to protect the remaining jobs.

“It has been caused by passenger reductions on the Dublin route and the decision of Ryanair to discontinue the current PSO contract. We regret the necessity for such action, but it is considered unavoidable in the present circumstances,” he added.

In a letter to staff, the company said the airport had suffered a massive reduction in revenue since Ryanair withdrew from its PSO contract — a state subsidy to help regional airports — last November.

The number of daily return flights on the vital route, which has accounted for almost a third of passenger numbers at Kerry Airport, has been reduced from three to one.

The airport company said it had exhausted all possibilities in its efforts to get another airline to take over the PSO contract on the route. It indicated that some of the staff may be re-employed if the PSO contract is renewed next July. There had been warnings of serious consequences for the airport — which has an annual throughput of about 380,000 passengers — as well as jobs and Kerry’s economy arising from the cutbacks on the Dublin service.

Ryanair has claimed it withdrew from its PSO contract because the Government had not honoured its side of the contract.

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary said the airline was entitled to recover additional costs imposed by the Government, such as the tourism tax and airport charges, but the Government is not prepared to pay the €440,000 it needed to stay on the route for the remainder of the contract.

However, the Government counter charged Ryanair with not honouring the contract to provide a service on the route for three years, pointing out the contract was not due to expire until June 2011.

Efforts, in the meantime, to get Aer Arann to fill the vacuum by providing services on the route have not been successful.

Aer Arann had the PSO contract on the route until 2008 when it was outbid by Ryanair which received an annual PSO payment of €1.7 million.

Meanwhile, Kerry Airport has announced Ryanair will be resuming a twice- weekly service to Faro, in Portugal, and Alicante, in Spain, from March.

Regular flights to and from London Stansted, London Luton, Frankfurt Hahn and Manchester, as well as the daily flights to and from Dublin will continue.