Ryanair have said they intend pressing ahead with requests for their own terminal at Dublin Airport. Ryanair Chief Executive, Michael O’Leary, confirmed they have resubmitted their plan to build their own private airport terminal in Dublin to Minister Mary O'Rourke. Speaking at a press conference in Shannon this afternoon, Mr O’Leary called on Minister O'Rourke to support their plans, and end Aer Rianta's monopoly.
Akin to the plan for a private terminal in Dublin, Mr O’Leary says Ryanair will open up five new routes at Shannon and base at least three aircraft there. He called on the Government to “get up off its backside” and do something to promote low cost airline business into this country. He said that in recent years, the Government has been propping up Aer Rianta at the expense of the consumer.
Mr O’Leary said that he would not pay charges on its Shannon-Frankfurt route due to be imposed in three years’ time. He said that Aer Rianta currently charged “£10 a skull” for each passenger. He said that they would continue to look at developing services out of other European airports where costs were a fraction of those imposed by Aer Rianta.
Meanwhile, traffic figures released by Aer Rianta today indicate that record passenger numbers will pass through Cork, Dublin and Shannon airports over the course of the busy festive season. In all, the airports will handle over 972,000 passengers from today until January 4. The figure for the same period in 1999 was 530,000 passengers.
Dublin Airport will handle over 793,000 passengers, which represents a 5% increase over the same period last year. December 22 will be the busiest in terms of passengers returning home for the Christmas season. Cork Airport is also predicting a busy time and expects to handle 72,000 passengers, a strong 14% improvement on 1999 figures. Over 107,000 passengers will pass through Shannon Airport during this time, which would be an 18% increase over Christmas 1999.
