Ryanair axe west of Ireland flights to London

[PaulM]

Originally Posted by breakingnews.ie

Ryanair today announced plans to axe current services from the west of Ireland to London.

The low fares airline will cut services between Shannon and Knock airports to Luton and Gatwick on October 31.

The news came as the airline also unveiled two new routes from Shannon to Bournemouth and Edinburgh, and more flights between Dublin and Cork and Dublin and London Gatwick.

“Ryanair’s Shannon base has performed strongly this summer and has firmly established itself as an important driver of both tourism and business in the west of Ireland,” said Ryanair’s Peter Sherrard.

“Today’s new route announcements will allow passengers from the mid-west to enjoy more low fares to even more destinations.”

Ryanair currently connects Shannon to 25 destinations, sustaining 1,700 jobs in the mid-west and delivering 1.7 million passengers per annum.

Its services between Cork and Dublin will increase to four flights a day, with the Dublin to Gatwick frequency going up to six flights a day carrying an additional 200,000 passengers per annum. The new routes and additional frequencies will also start on October 31.

“To accommodate these new routes Ryanair will drop flights from Shannon to Luton and from Knock to Gatwick,” continued Mr Sherrard. “Both Shannon and Knock will still maintain daily services to two other London airports from this date.“

It's like there is little demand in the North-west.....

[Thomas J Stamp]

How dare they? Michael O'Leary, whom I have on good authority is not from Knock, is only doing this for selfish business reasons. Dosnt he know that this will only result in the airport in knock nearly ending up closing? The people of the west have provided these ungreatful bastards with an airport and they wont fly into it. How dare they!! Next thing you know Irish Rail wont run trains on the WRC simply because no-one wants to go on them!!

The swines!!

[houstyl]

Seems to have as much to with Ryanair's turf war with Easyjet (who pulled out of Shannon-Gatwick and Knock-Gatwick recently) as anything. Now that they've been seen off Ryanair can pull the routes. From a rail perspective the interesting thing is the increase in the number of Cork-Dublin flights.... must show a good level of demand for the air service.

[Jister]

Of course if they closed the "Mikey Mouse" airports - Knock, Galway, kerry, Waterford etc. and invested the money in a good train and road system to Shannon airport, then we should be onto a winner, Shannon would have a lot more air routes and charter services which would draw more passengers and make parts of the WRC and Lk -WD line far more viable.

[colmoc]

I quite like my regional airport (kerry) thanks Jister and would prefer not to drive to shannon or cork to fly to london

I def wouldnt be using the train to get to either cork or shannon its round the world for fun kinda thing on the train unless your going to dublin.

[Jister]

Originally Posted by colmoc

I quite like my regional airport (kerry) thanks Jister and would prefer not to drive to shannon or cork to fly to london

I def wouldnt be using the train to get to either cork or shannon its round the world for fun kinda thing on the train unless your going to dublin.

But if there was a motorway to Shannon from Kerry then its probably 1.5 hours from Killarney. The point is you could have a lot more direct flights from Shannon to different destinations rather than every airport on the west coast flying to London once or twice a day.

You would have a flight from Shannon to London every hour or two and flights to a lot more places on a daily basis.

The thing about the train is you save on the car park while you are in Spain for 2 weeks.