Shannon Airport is being downgraded. This is why that's not such a big deal
The mid-west hub will be realigned as a ‘flexible category nine’ service to cut costs.
SHANNON AIRPORT HAS announced plans to rejig its status as a ‘category nine’ airport in a bid to cut costs.
UN agency the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) designates airports up to category 10 depending on the size of aircraft they can handle and the firefighting services they would require in emergency situations.
Category-nine airports can cater for wide-body jets such as the Airbus A330 and Boeing B747, which typically carry 250-plus and 400-plus passengers respectively.
However airplanes of that scale rarely use Shannon. It’s believed that about 1% of all passengers that travel through Shannon arrive on a wide-body aircraft. For example, both Aer Lingus and United Airlines use narrow-body Boeing B757s for their transatlantic flights from the western Ireland hub.
In order to maintain its category-nine status, it’s understood that the airport would need to keep extra staff on its books to handle emergency fire services.
A Boeing 747-400
Early retirements
A spokesman for the airport told Fora that Shannon is realigning “from a full-time category nine to a flexible category-nine service” as part of proposed cost-cutting measures.
As a result, this “will result in a lower employee requirement”.
“We are proposing a voluntary early retirement scheme to employees over the age of 55 years as at 1 January 2017,” he said.
It’s not known yet how many workers will opt in for the voluntary scheme or what job-cut targets the airport has planned. Other proposed cost-cutting measures include roster and shift changes for continuing staff.
The spokesman said these measures are part of a plan to “help facilitate a €44 million investment programme over the next five years”.
One of the projects in the pipeline is a resurfacing of the runway at a cost of €15 million. Works will begin this summer.
In 2015, Shannon Airport, which separated from Dublin Airport operator DAA two years earlier, reported more than 1.7 million passengers – a 4.6% increase on the previous year. Data for 2016 is not yet available.
According to figures from the Irish Aviation Authority, Shannon handled more than 20,000 flights in 2016, an 11% increase on the same 12-month period prior.
Its owner, the semi-state Shannon Group, doesn’t provide detailed financial figures for the airport, however the company announced an operating profit of €3.2 million in 2015.
