Airline monopolies and nationalistic red herrings

IS Fergus Finlay becoming a little paranoid in relation to the Ryanair bid for Aer Lingus? (Irish Examiner, October 10).

He writes of a future in which Michael O’Leary will have killed off all airline competition before exploiting his monopolistic position to force the airport authorities to sell their assets to him.

Monopolies thrive when access by competitors is prevented. In Ireland, such behaviour is painfully visible in utilities and in some aspects of telecommunications and ground transport.

However, Mr Finlay’s rationale makes little sense in terms of air travel. Since April 1997, unconditional access to all domestic markets has been granted to all airlines in the EU.

A quick check of Irish airport websites indicates that, including Aer Lingus, we have 35 European airlines servicing the Republic. Northern Ireland has 14.

If Ryanair mismanages its pricing strategies, many of these would probably be very happy to increase their presence — just as Ryanair did when Aer Lingus lost its quasi-monopoly status. There is nothing to prevent them from doing this.

Already central European airlines take a significant share of air travel between Ireland and their region.

This is called the capitalist system — something that the Government, apparently inadvertently, embraced when privatising Aer Lingus.

So Mr Finlay is correct to query how well the privatisation of Aer Lingus was conducted — and the apparent lack of foresight by the transport minister and the airline in foreseeing the Ryanair bid.

But one can only suspect that raising ‘monopoly’ as an issue in these circumstances is a nationalistic red herring more befitting panicking politicians than a much-respected columnist.

Donal Fellows

Ul. Prosta 70

Warsaw

Poland