Chief executive of Ryanair Group Michael O’Leary has said incentives for airlines to move flights to Cork won’t have an impact on passengers coming to Dublin Airport as other airlines will just fill the available slot.
Dublin Airport is currently limited to 32 million passengers a year under its 2007 planning permission granted by Fingal County Council. Daa has a planning application before the council which could allow it to increase its capacity limit to 40 million.
However, despite the limit being in place, Daa has already said Dublin Airport would breach the limit this year.
In July, Daa chief executive Kenny Jacobs said while Dublin Airport was restricted, Cork Airport had the capacity to grow further and over the next couple of years airlines that move routes and traffic from Dublin to Cork would be offered lower charges to keep the aircraft in the country.
At the time, he said Daa had already begun talks with airlines about the incentive scheme.
Speaking to reporters following his company’s annual general meeting today in Dublin, Mr O’Leary said that trying to encourage airlines to leave slots at Dublin Airport won’t control passenger numbers coming in all that much.
“The problem for the airlines is if you switch a slot out of Dublin, somebody else will come and nick the slot. In fact, we’ll come and nick then slot anybody else’s slot, we’ll take the slot if they move to Cork and we’ll fill it and they won’t get it back,” he said.
Mr O’Leary also claimed that airlines have yet to receive details of the incentives. The Irish Examiner understands that daa wrote to airlines last month about the incentives but the details have not been published because they are commercially sensitive.
In a statement, Cork Airport’s managing director Niall MacCarthy Quotes said they are “actively engaging with airlines to grow even more next year with more choice, more routes and further growing tourism to the south of Ireland”.
In relation to the passenger cap at Dublin Airport, Mr O’Leary called the restriction “bogus” because it was based over fears over road access to the airport in 2007. He said the airport could sustain more than that, pointing to the fact it would breach the limit this year.
“We would have added another million passengers in Dublin this year without that cap,” he said.
Mr O’Leary called on Transport Minister Eamon Ryan to direct the Irish Aviation Authority to add more slots to Dublin Airport this winter and next year, adding he did not believe there would be any “ramification for breaching the limit”.
He said the limit was “preventing us and the other airlines from adding the 250,000 extra seats we had every Christmas, which is preventing the children going to Lapland”.
“Transport Minister Eamon Ryan is ruining Christmas. We’re going to be cancelling the Santa flights,” he said, adding there were 20 charter flights to Lapland that would not be going ahead from Dublin this year.