AER LINGUS boss Dermot Mannion has told The Irish Times that, given his time over, there is nothing he would change about the way the axing of the Shannon-Heathrow route was handled almost seven months ago, writes Ciaran Hancock.
"I can't conceive of circumstances in which an announcement like this could have been made any easier than it was."
To recap, Aer Lingus announced its decision to quit the Shannon- Heathrow route on August 7th. That same day, Mannion unveiled Belfast as Aer Lingus's first base outside the Republic, with flights to Heathrow the centrepiece of its plan.
This outraged business and tourism groups in the west and led to a long period of sustained lobbying aimed at saving the slots - all to no avail.
It later emerged that the Dublin Airport Authority and the Department of Transport had been given a heads-up by Aer Lingus of its plans but not the Shannon Airport Authority, which has argued that it could have put together a package of incentives to tempt the airline to stay.
The axing of Heathrow led to more than 40 Aer Lingus jobs being lost in Shannon. The airline was accused of betraying the west.
"You could argue about the timing but what I felt we had to do was to make the two announcements on the same day," Mannion said.
"There was no other way. Had we made an announcement at Shannon that we were stopping the Heathrow service there would have been tremendous speculation about what we were going to do with those slots.
"We are a public company; we have to disclose these issues, however painful it might have been, and it has been difficult, personally and professionally, I won't deny that.
"The only way to do it was in the short, sharp way that we did. Looking back on it now, I don't think I would have changed anything about the way we made the announcement.
"We said at the time, and I repeat now, that Belfast is a more cost- effective operation than Shannon, I make no apology for saying it," Mannion continued.
"You don't need to lecture me on understanding the feelings of people in Shannon. I mean, I'm from the west [ Sligo] so you can take it from me that we considered our position on all of this extremely carefully.
"Am I proud of it? Maybe that's a subject for another day.
"Was it easy? Of course it wasn't easy. But I did say then and we have reconfirmed [ this week] that Aer Lingus remains committed to Shannon.
"We have just confirmed the winter schedule for 2008 and there will be three transatlantic flights there a day from Shannon."
But will there be any new short-haul services from there?
"We have no plans at this time for short haul from Shannon."
