PJ McGoldrick is addicted to the aviation business. Well, he must be. You could be forgiven for wondering why else a 64-year-old who has experienced the highs and lows of this ruthless business for almost 40 years would still have the appetite for opening a new airline?

This week Mr McGoldrick will be in Shannon to launch EUjet, a low-cost carrier flying to the UK, Malaga, Murcia, Faro and Geneva. It's just four years since he closed his last Shannon-based venture, TransAer, which after 10 successful years was grounded with liabilities of more than €30 million and the loss of 450 jobs. He admits he has been bruised by his beloved industry but just wants to get back in the air.

"I think you get to the stage that it is the only thing you know," he says. "I have all the scars of the aviation business because of my long experience in it. It is a tough business - but look at the results. Look how well Ryanair has done. Aer Lingus is doing well. There is a lot of doom and gloom out there but you don't see it in the results of those who are getting their act together. There is still room for people who put the right ingredients together."

Setting up an airline has never been for the faint-hearted and it is a particularly brave undertaking at a time when the likes of Ryanair and Easyjet are braced for a "bloodbath" and when the price of oil is rocketing. "Aviation is a very visible business. When you carry passengers, the media focus on it and so if you fail, you fail very publicly," he says.

This time most of the McGoldrick family are also on board for the journey. His son, Stuart, is the airline's deputy chief executive and is largely focused on its sales and marketing. EUjet's uniforms were designed by Mr McGoldrick's wife, Jeannette, who is directing the grooming for its frontline staff, and has been sitting in on interviews to select the airline's team which currently totals 200.

"I have them all out there working to keep the shop open," he says. His second son appears to be the only family member who is immune from the airline bug and is making a living as a stockbroker.

Father and son established EUjet last year initially to provide aircraft and crew to operate scheduled services for Air France, Lufthansa's low-cost airline Germanwings and Italy's biggest low-cost carrier, Volare. Now, though, it is ready to become a fully-fledged airline and has already started flying from the small Kent International to routes across the continent.

"The business model is to build up the Kent operation in the same way that Ryanair built up its Stansted operation and to develop an airline out of Shannon rather than Dublin. We have the right airplane to develop things out of Shannon. I don't want to try to steal a piece of somebody else's market. I would rather pick an area where there is an opportunity to create something new and to pick a population that is not being well served," he says.

Shannon is a ripe location for EUjet, he believes. "We can develop thin routes. That will give us the opportunity to develop routes that wouldn't be viable for airlines with big aircraft. We just want to develop routes that work for us."

It is focusing on routes that are currently not being served by other airlines. "It is easier to know where things will go in Kent. We are providing a service to a population that finds it very difficult to get to other airports around London because of the traffic. In Shannon we are not looking for that big number of passengers."

Already it has suffered a setback and has decided to abandon plans to operate daily flights between Shannon and Dublin and has had to inform passengers who had booked seats.

It had spoken with Aer Lingus and hoped the national carrier would pull off the route and make way for its more frequent service, but this did not materialise. Instead Mr McGoldrick says it will operate a service from Shannon to Kent.

Those who fly with the new airline will travel on Fokker 100 jets that can carry 108 passengers. Like all low-cost airlines, passengers will be offered drinks and snacks for purchase and it is advertising fares as low as €7 for those who book in time to bag the cheap seats. Mr McGoldrick expects to carry a half a million passengers this year and says that while EUjet won't make a profit in the first year, it will be making money within 24 months.

He is tight-lipped about the losses EUjet will incur over the next 12 months. He says there is simply "never enough money in the world" to cover the cost of starting an airline.

Memories of the collapse of recent start-up airlines Jetmagic and Freshaer are still alive in the public mind.

Mr McGoldrick says he knew both ventures would fail. "JetMagic [which was based in Cork\] was an excellent operation but I always knew it would fail. It offered free food and free booze on board its flights. It used the wrong airplane to compete with airlines with lower costs. It was very nice for the passenger to fly on but had all of the ingredients for failure."

He claims that Freshaer, which sold seats on some of the same routes EUjet will offer, should never have been given the status of an airline. "What happened with Freshaer was very difficult for us who are serious players in the industry. Freshaer wasn't an airline, it was a tour operator that didn't have any airplanes or airport slots. This is a really, really tough business. Your chances of making it are not high if you do everything right. The chances of making it if you do everything wrong are non-existent."

Mr McGoldrick says he has no intention of sparking a fares war with either Aer Lingus or one of his former airlines, Ryanair, and isn't expecting one.

He spent three years as Ryanair's chief executive in the late 1980s when the airline was struggling to stay in business and worked with Mr Michael O'Leary, who was the Ryan family's financial watchdog at the time. Mr McGoldrick says he hasn't seen Mr O'Leary since announcing his new venture. "I haven't seen him in a long time. We don't hang around together. We worked together and got on really well. I have never had a harsh word with him."

So has he set up EUjet for his son? "I certainly set it up with him and he wants to be in this business, but I still enjoy it," he says.

Name: PJ McGoldrick.

Age: 64.

Family: Married to Jeannette. They have two sons.

Background: From Sligo, he joined the Air Corps and trained as a pilot.

Career: He joined Shannon Air, an airline that collapsed a year later in 1965. He went on to join TransMeridian Airlines, a cargo airline, and rose to become managing director and later launched HeavyLift Cargo Airlines. In 1988 he returned to Ireland and took over as chief executive of Ryanair, staying three years. He went on to establish his own airline, TransAer, which was based at Shannon. It closed in October 2000.

Interests: He has a sports cruiser on the Shannon and has a flying boat.

Why is he in the news? This week his new airline, EUjet, launches flights from Shannon to Malaga, Murcia, Faro and Geneva.