2012-10-19 — /travelprnews.com/ — Ryanair, Ireland’s No1 airline, today (19 Oct) called for confirmation from the DAA airport monopoly and the Commission for Aviation Regulation that any unjustified contribution to the DAA’s pension scheme will not be passed on to passengers in the form of higher airport charges, but will be funded instead from the sale of DAA assets.
Ryanair highlighted that traffic at the three DAA airports continues to decline under the DAA’s mismanagement of its high and uncompetitive airport charges. Despite the opening of the DAA’s €1.2bn white elephant T2 in November 2010, traffic at the three DAA airports continues to fall, from 30m in 2007, to less than 23m in 2011. While the DAA’s traffic has been declining Ryanair has been growing at lower cost airports outside of Ireland.
|
DAA traffic (m)
|
2007
|
2008
|
2009
|
2010
|
2011
|
Change
|
|
Dublin
|
23.3
|
23.5
|
20.5
|
18.4
|
18.8
|
-20%
|
|
Cork
|
3.2
|
3.3
|
2.8
|
2.4
|
2.4
|
-25%
|
|
Shannon
|
3.6
|
3.2
|
2.8
|
1.8
|
1.6
|
-56%
|
|
Total DAA
|
30.0
|
29.9
|
26.1
|
22.6
|
22.8
|
-24%
|
|
Ryanair
|
50.9
|
58.6
|
66.5
|
72.1
|
75.2
|
+50%
|
Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said:
“There is no justification for the DAA making multi-million euro contributions to its pension scheme at a time when the DAA monopoly is raising prices and losing traffic. There is an urgent need for the high costs at Dublin Airport to be reversed in order to reverse its continuing traffic decline which continues to damage Ireland’s tourism industry, our economy and job creation in this state.
We now call on the DAA and the CAR to confirm that any unjustified contribution will not be passed on to Irish passengers in the form of higher charges.”
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