Cork Airport calls crisis meeting after Ryanair withdrawal threat
Cork Airport: Travel restrictions are costing the State’s two biggest airports around €1m a day. Picture: Dan Linehan
The Government is under mounting pressure to lift coronavirus air travel restrictions which have crippled the aviation and tourism industry and which are costing the State’s two biggest airports around €1m a day.
It faced a wave of calls yesterday from TDs, airports and travel agents, as well as from business leaders in the south and west, for an easing of restrictions to facilitate international air travel ahead of today’s meeting of the cabinet’s Covid-19 sub-committee today.
Junior Transport Minister Hildegarde Naughton said the group will explore whether the introduction of pre-flight Covid-19 testing can provide an alternative to the restrictions and allow for reopening of international air travel.
It comes as Dalton Philips, the head of the Dublin Airport Authority, which runs Dublin and Cork airports, said the company’s losses are running close to €150m for the year-to-date.
“We have to get the country going again. We need to balance the different interests between health and the economy, but at the moment we’re strangling the country,” he said.
Cork Chamber said decisions must be made to support the return of credible levels of passenger volume on key commercial and tourism routes, including testing of passengers.
“The European Commission has now set a clear direction for commonality of approach to travel between member states," Chamber CEO Conor Healy said.
“The Government must be supportive as this proposal moves to the European Council, and push for equivalent international agreements to be progressed with urgency."
His calls were echoed by chamber groups in the Mid-West amid fears for the future of Shannon Airport.
Ennis, Galway, Limerick and Shannon chambers called on Transport Minister Eamon Ryan to establish a new model for aviation in Ireland.
Management at Cork Airport have now called a ‘crisis briefing’ for Oireachtas members to outline the scale of the threat it faces amid the pandemic, and in the wake of Ryanair’s threat to close its bases in Cork and Shannon airports unless the Government relaxes its quarantine restrictions on passengers flying into the country.
If the threat is realised, 35 pilots and 95 cabin crew would be forced to take unpaid leave from the end of October.
The move would virtually wipe out Cork’s already decimated passenger traffic which has plunged 95% during lockdown.
Ryanair accounted for around 80% of the airport’s traffic during the coronavirus crisis — overtaking Aer Lingus as the airport’s largest airline for the first time in the airport’s 59-year history.
Of the six flights which departed Cork Airport on Tuesday, five were operated by Ryanair. It is understood that only one in three seats on board the 189-seater aircraft are being filled.
In an interview with the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation yesterday, Mr Philips described the impact of Covid-19 on the business as “devastating”.
About 3.5m passengers passed through Dublin Airport in August 2019. That figure was down to 500,000 last month — plunging from an average throughput of 100,000 people daily in August 2019 to 16,500 passengers daily last month.
He warned that passenger traffic may not recover to 2019 levels for three to four years.
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