Cork airport operator facing 'well over €200m' in losses due to Covid crisis

The DAA said it is imperative to open up the country as a matter of urgency.

DAA, which operates Cork Airport, is facing €200m in losses this year. File Picture. 

The Government is coming under increasing pressure to fast-track a regime of rapid testing for Covid-19 at the country’s airports as it emerged that the operator of Cork Airport is set to experience “well over €200m in losses” in 2020.

Dalton Phillips, CEO of DAA which operates Cork and Dublin airports, said, “If we don’t open up this country, we’ll be in a very bad state”.

“When Shannon or Cork lose a route it doesn’t just come back, it gets redeployed somewhere else,” he said. 

“It can take four to six years to develop a route,” he said, citing the example of a Dallas-Dublin flight, which arrived yesterday with just 19 passengers, with that American Airlines route set to be pulled. 

“We won’t be getting them back quickly,” he said.

At present, Ireland will accept travellers arriving into the country who have passed through rapid testing facilities at their point of origin but has no comparable testing processes in place for departures from its own airports.

At the second meeting of the Oireachtas Transport Committee, held in the fallout of Ryanair’s bombshell announcement that it would be cancelling all flights from Cork and Shannon from November 4 until December 12, a description of such a regime was given by Ivan Bassato, executive vice president of Rome Airport, regarding the rapid testing that has been run at its Fiumicino terminal since mid-August.

That process sees arrivals to the Rome terminal undergoing a rapid antigen test, in conjunction with a similar testing facility at the terminal’s long term parking facility.

Mr Bassato stressed that the regime has been seen as a success within the industry and that Alitalia, the Italian national carrier, shares this view.

Following his presentation, chair of the committee Kieran O’Donnell said, “We’ll have to put you in touch with the Irish government as quickly as we can."

The sitting heard from Mr Phillips and Mary Considine, CEO of the Shannon Airport Group, with the common consensus being that the industry is on its knees and in urgent need of both capital funding from central government and, particularly, the establishment of testing within airports.

However, Mr Phillips said it is currently impossible to establish a fast-testing regime as legislation in the form of a statutory instrument needs to be signed into law by the Minister for Local Government and Planning.

It is ironic, he said, that in signing up to the EU’s traffic light system Ireland will “accept a pre-departure antigen test if it was approved in another EU member state, but won’t as yet endorse this system at home”.

Both Mr Phillips and Ms Considine agreed that the implementation of airport testing as soon as possible is critical “or else there won’t be much of an aviation industry left”. 

Mr Phillips said it’s imperative that such testing happens either upon arrival or pre-departure, with the vast majority of stakeholders favouring the latter. He said he had heard proposals that a world-class regime could be set up at a cost of €6 per test, which he felt the passenger should pay, a position Ms Considine agreed with.

Regarding Cork Airport, specifically, the meeting heard that it would be in need of €70m in capital funding over the next five years.

Cork’s CEO Niall McCarthy said that the airport is set to make a €20m loss this year, with the loss of €14m in annual operating profits.

“We need action now. We can’t come back here in a few weeks and be sitting having the same conversations,” Ms Considine said.

She said her airport “cannot continue to operate 24/7 in the wake of Ryanair’s announcement”.