Ryanair's 'underperforming' Shannon-Dublin route to end

Ryanair is planning to cease its twice-daily flights from Shannon to Dublin on February 3rd, less than three months after they were launched.

A spokesman for the airline said the route had "underperformed", but he declined to detail its average load factor.

"It was fairly obvious to us that it wasn't working," he said. "If routes aren't performing then we will look at changing them. We do it all the time."

Ryanair said it was planning to expand its services out of Shannon and would carry two million passengers to and from the Co Clare airport in 2008. It plans to launch a service to Palma, Majorca, from March 16th and has increased its number of flights to airports in London following the withdrawal of Aer Lingus's Heathrow route on Sunday. In 2004, Ryanair signed a five-year deal with Shannon with a view to delivering two million passengers annually. "We're ahead of our targets under that deal," the spokesman said.

Separately, Ryanair claimed victory yesterday in its long-running industrial relations battle with pilot representative bodies, Impact and the Irish Airline Pilots' Association. The airline said the trade unions failed to attend a Labour Court hearing into their dispute having withdrawn their action at "the last minute".

This claim, however, was denied by Impact. Assistant general secretary Michael Landers said the union had written to the Labour Court and Ryanair on December 21st to inform them it was withdrawing its case.