Aer Lingus angst

PLATFORM:It's high time all we sentimentalists took a reality check on Aer Lingus. I offer these four thoughts:

First, I remind those who are now protesting about the behaviour of Aer Lingus that this outcome was clearly foreseeable at the time of the sale. Despite all the smokescreens that the Government tried to put up, its 25 per cent shareholding was never any guarantee it would be able to impose its view about national priorities on the privatised company.

The Goldman Sachs report made that very clear and it was one of the main reasons I voted in the Seanad against the sale.

I had no objection to privatisation in principle, but I thought it simply wasn't a good deal - in that the mediocre price we got was not a fair exchange for what we would lose. We are now seeing the first instalment of what we have lost.

Painful as it is, we should not fool ourselves that it is the end of the cost we will have to pay.

Second, regardless of how they felt at the time of the sale, people should not to be bamboozled again - especially not by the same arguments. Recently, Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey tried to lay down a new smokescreen by saying he will appoint two more Government nominees to the board of Aer Lingus and that this would somehow ensure the preservation of the remaining Heathrow slots. Let's not be taken in by that.

If a majority of Aer Lingus shareholders cannot stop the management doing what it wants to, a minority of the board members certainly won't.

We haven't yet heard the end of the Heathrow saga, and there is absolutely nothing the Government can do about it - unless they are prepared to bring crashing down the whole house of cards.That, of course, would mean admitting it was wrong to privatise the airline on the terms and at the time that it did.

Third, let none of us underestimate the ruthlessness with which Aer Lingus will pursue what it sees, rightly or wrongly, as its commercial interests.

It seems to believe it can successfully pursue a strategy against the wishes of its shareholders, against the wishes of the Government of the State in which it is based, against the wishes of its staff and, above all, against the wishes of its existing customers - which many people, myself included, would consider to be one of the airline's most valuable assets.

The very haste and stealth with which Aer Lingus announced this move - on a bank holiday weekend in the dog days of summer - is not behaviour we'd expect from a world-class company.

It is instead the behaviour of a small- minded, small-time operator which appears to believe that it can profit at the expense of its stakeholders.

Only time will tell whether the company can survive with an approach like this, but for our part we should be in no doubt at all as to our expectations as to how they will try to behave.

The warning for Shannon and the west is a warning for all of us.

So, fourth, let's face up to the reality that what will happen in the future is that Aer Lingus will apply the simple laws of arithmetic in dealing with its Heathrow slots.

A big aircraft uses the same slot as a small one, a long-haul aircraft uses the same slot as a short-haul one.

If it wants to maximise the value of the Heathrow slots, in the long-term Aer Lingus will use the biggest possible planes on the longest possible routes.

What that means, in practice, is that Aer Lingus will find it can make more money by flying directly from Heathrow to New York and other points in the United States. And if the imperative always to make more money is all that drives the airline, that's exactly what it will do.

I foresee a time when, to get to America, we will all have to fly through London.