New campaign to preserve 'gateway' status of Shannon

A concerted campaign, to be financed by interests in the west of Ireland, has been launched to preserve Shannon Airport's "gateway" status to the US.

This follows a public meeting in Ennis organised by the Shannon Airport Western Alliance to rally support in the face of the threat to the stopover posed by international moves towards an "open skies" policy.

The task force's first move is to seek a meeting with the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan.

Task force members include representatives from Shannon Development, Aer Rianta Shannon, the Mid-West Regional Authority, SIGNAL, the re-activated Shannon workers' lobby and business and tourism interests from the mid-west.

Aer Rianta's director of Shannon Airport, Mr Martin Moroney, told the meeting "the threat to Shannon is very serious". He said that with 30 per cent of the airport's 2.4 million passengers on US routes out of Shannon, transatlantic business is "a crucial, irreplaceable segment of Shannon's business".

"From Aer Rianta's point of view, we want to see the current situation continue and we are very concerned that Aer Lingus is not being clear in what they are going to do in relation to their transatlantic services."

Mr Moroney said if airlines serving transatlantic routes pull out of Shannon in any new arrangement, "Shannon Airport as an entity in itself and as an employer will suffer greatly even if it can develop other types of traffic".

The chief executive of Shannon Development, Mr Kevin Thompstone, said the current Shannon-US gateway policy is a coherent instrument of economic policy. "It is important to highlight the fact that the Shannon-US gateway policy is a regional economic issue," he said.