So, Aer Lingus have decided to abandon the four flights per day to Heathrow, opting instead to house three planes in Belfast and open a new route from Belfast to Heathrow.
This is a disaster for regional development. The stands at Heathrow are like hen’s teeth. Nobody can get their hands on them and Aer Lingus have them to do with as they please.
There are two kinds of passenger using the Shannon-Heathrow route. Those simply using the route to move between the west of Ireland and London in a point-to-point fashion and those going and coming from further afield. Arguably, Ryanair can cater for the majority of people wishing to simply move between London and the west of Ireland, however the Ryanair route is to Stansted.
Stansted is not a major hub in the same way that Heathrow is. Stansted does not have the flow of traffic from the US, Europe and beyond that comes into Heathrow and consequently those people that fly into Heathrow now cannot directly come to the west of Ireland.
This will affect tourism in a big way and other businesses as well.
Start-up enterprises will be greatly affected. The west of Ireland is now immediately less attractive as a place to do business. It is less attractive as a place to visit as a tourist.
It has simply become that bit more marginalised and less likely to develop. This is not good for Ireland as a whole where we need to move people out of Dublin and its congestion problems. The solution is not simply a matter of encouraging Aer Arann or its ilk to come in. It will have to be a Shannon-Heathrow route that does the replacing.
I have no idea if this is possible, but right now it is becoming an imperative to do something.
comments anybody?
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackRyanair also fly to Gatwich
Thank you Simon. Ryanair fly three London airports - Stansted, Luton and Gatwick.
Gatwick is about half the size of Heathrow in terms of passenger numbers. My own personal experience of Gatwick is that it has a qualitatively different kind of passenger, with a much larger proportion of Gatwick passengers being package holiday holidaymakers, where Heathrow has much fewer (proportionately) package holiday passengers.
The significance of Heathrow for Shannon is that it has a lot of onward connectivity with every airline in the world flying in and with onward connections to Shannon being relatively easy. Gatwick wouldn’t have that kind of connectivity.
Now if you want to come from the US, do some business in London, go to the west of Ireland for golf and then fly Shannon-London-US_City home, it becomes much more difficult after today than before.
Currently, of the US cities, Shannon only services Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia directly. Ryanair flies to loads of places from Shannon and is now almost solely responsible for keeping the airport afloat (if indeed it suceeds in remaining afloat). Heathrow was an invaluable connection.
I hope this makes sense.
A US person can always fly instead of SHannon-Heatrow-US city fly Shannon-New York-US city. Using New york as the hub instead of Heatrow The use of Heatrow would mainly for people flying to places in the world not America. Such as oz and South Africa.
About half the American traffic into Shannon Airport comes through Heathrow. This kind of passenger will either have to redirect in the US, as you have said or choose a more circuituous route from London to Shannon - realistically, if they want to visit Ireland, they are more likely now to go to Dublin or Belfast.