Airline abandons Shannon

An Aer Rianta spokesman said it had been “specifically told” by World Airways the switch was not related to recent security breaches at Shannon.
Six anti-war activists have been charged after a U.S. Navy aircraft was attacked twice with hatchets and hammers.
Last week, the Irish government deployed 120 soldiers into Shannon to protect aircraft.
Aer Rianta says World Airways had told it of the switch to Germany on Jan. 29, the day before the first hatchet attack on the U.S. aircraft.
“The reason they gave us was they had quite a large base in Frankfurt and some of their other traffic had decreased,” the Aer Rianta spokesman said. “They have technical and administrative staff based there so they wanted to make better utilization of those staff.
“For the immediate future they said that the traffic that had been coming through Shannon was being moved to Frankfurt.”
World Airways had been using Shannon since the 1980s, the spokesman told RTE. Last year, the airline would have accounted for about a third of the troop movements through the airport.
Total revenue from transiting and refueling commercial aircraft carrying troops from all countries was worth about euro 9 million to Aer Rianta last year.
“We will be working to resume what has been a long-standing relationship with World Airways long before the current geo-political situation,” the spokesman said.
While the major portion of the military aircraft landings has been at Shannon, Transport Minister Seamus Brennan said Dublin Airport was also used last month by military aircraft from the U.S., Canada, Croatia and France.
In a series of written Dail answers, Brennan said 11 commercial airlines — seven from the U.S., three from Britain and one Swiss — had used Shannon to transit troops, weapons or munitions.
Foreign Minister Brian Cowen said 17 countries had “blanket permission” for their military aircraft to overfly Ireland provided they are unarmed and carry no arms, ammunition or explosives and do not engage in intelligence gathering.