SHANNON Airport is facing two separate threats to its future.
American airlines are expected to be allowed to by pass it completely within the next year, while the Russian airline, Aeroflot, is threatening to pull out of the airport unless it is allowed to take on passengers for New York.
Aer Lingus is fiercely resisting this demand.
The Minister for Transport, Mr Dukes, signalled the end of the compulsory Shannon stopover when he said last Thursday that an "open skies" policy was now inevitable, though he denied it represented a threat to Shannon.
Under the present bilateral aviation treaty agreed between the US and Ireland, for every direct flight allowed into Dublin airlines must provide a direct flight to Shannon.
A Clare Fianna Fail TD, Mr Tony Killeen, said yesterday: "Mr Dukes is out of touch with what is going on in his Department."
A new treaty on air traffic is due to be negotiated between the Irish and US governments this year.
This is expected to mark the final phasing out of the compulsory Shannon stopover and means that US carriers will have unlimited direct access to Dublin.
They will stop in Shannon only when they want to.
Mr Killeen said this would mark the end of Shannon as a year round transatlantic airport as the US carriers will only want to serve it in the summer months.
Aeroflot has threatened to pull out of Ireland entirely unless it is given rights to pick up New York bound passengers at Shannon. Aviation sources say Aer Lingus is strongly resisting this demand, saying that it will cause job losses within the airline and also its aircraft maintenance subsidiary,
TEAM Aer Lingus.
The sources say Mr Dukes and officials from his Department met representatives from Aeroflot during a visit to Moscow for the St Patrick's Day celebrations.
Aeroflot repeated a long standing request to be allowed pick up rights at Shannon for New York bound flights.
At present, Aer Lingus enjoys a monopoly on scheduled services between Shannon and New York and fears that Aeroflot would undercut it if allowed on the route.
A strategy document prepared by the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications says it would be "prudent" to prepare now for an open skies policy that would allow US airlines to fly to Shannon only when they wanted to.
The document says the existing arrangement has been consistently cited by US airlines as one of the barriers in the way of providing new, direct scheduled services to Ireland from the US.
The Department believes the EU-USA multilateral negotiations which have begun "are expected to result ... in the creation of a common aviation area spanning the two trading blocs in which national exceptions (such as the Shannon stop requirement) to a genuine `open skies' policy will be removed".
The document goes on to note that already eight EU member states have negotiated "open skies" agreements with the USA. "It is therefore prudent to be prepared for these developments," it says.
Mr Killeen said yesterday the change to an "open skies" policy would reduce Shannon to the status of a regional airport providing a feeder service to US flights out of Dublin.