Sir, - If Michael O Riain's claim (letters, September 23rd) that he delivered his Survival in a Bloodbath paper in 1983 as a response to Pan Am getting rights to Dublin, it has to rank as one of the all time records in delayed reaction. Everyone down Shannon way knows that Pan Am got rights.. into Dublin (via Shannon) in 1972, along with TWA, but did not take them up.
Perhaps Mr O Riain may be thinking about the early 1980s entry into Ireland of airlines such as Trans America and North West, and the competition which they introduced which was to prompt the Air Transport Bill protection for Aer Lingus in the mid 1980s. It would seem that the rewriting of history, which prompted my first response to Dr Garret FitzGerald, may be contagious.
It was purely in the interests of keeping the record straight, rather than any other motive, which prompted my original letter. The SIGNAL workers' lobby has remained in place to give whatever support it can to the development of Shannon Airport; and because Shannon has always looked forward, there is no demand to turn the clock back or for a return to the Shannon stopover. The enduring hurt to the Shannon region was that the campaign which ended the Shannon stop was bed by the Irish national airline, rather than by the overseas airlines which had previously campaigned for a change in the US Ireland bilateral.
Perhaps Aer Lingus might. favour a return to the Shannon stopover. Throughout the Cahill Plan campaign, it argued that getting direct US flights to Dublin was vital to the future survival of the airline and its attraction for a strategic partner. But two years after the Shannon stop went, and with tourism going through a boom era, the chief executive of Aer Lingus has bluntly stated that the finances of the airline are in a perilous situation and there is still no sign of that strategic partner.
As to Mr O Riain's reference to Shannon Airport thriving, even a cursory glance through the Aer Rianta annual report shows that since 1993, traffic through Dublin Airport has grown 35 per cent (or by more than two million); traffic through Cork has grown 15 per cent; but at Shannon, where the vital transit traffic which supports year round business has been halved since the end of the stopover, 1995 traffic was actually below the 1993 figure. So much for Mr O Riain's version of "thriving". - Yours, etc.,
SIGNAL workers' lobby, Shannon Airport,
Co Clare.