Michael O’Leary: Impasse on Cork flights to US is shameful

Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary has branded as shameful the failure of US authorities to grant Norwegian Air International (NAI) a licence to operate new low-fares flights to the US from Cork.

Speaking at the US embassy’s Creative Minds series in Dublin, Mr O’Leary said the failure to grant the licence was the result of nothing more than a lack of “political will”.

“We don’t have deregulation and, without deregulation, you can’t really have long-haul. We have a stunning example of that going on at the moment. We technically have US-Europe Open Skies yet Norwegian are utterly shamefully being blocked, mainly by the lobbying activity of the pilots’ union on this side and the American pilots union in the States using the current elections as a means of forcing the [US] state department, or whoever it is, to not licence Norwegian to fly,” he said.