Aer Lingus chief executive Dermot Mannion will join the North's First Minister, the Rev Ian Paisley, at Stormont today to announce that the airline is establishing its first base outside the Republic at Belfast International Airport, senior company and political sources have confirmed.
Mr Mannion and a senior Aer Lingus management team will travel to Stormont this afternoon after first meeting unions in Shannon and Dublin airports about the proposed discontinuation of Aer Lingus flights from Shannon to London Heathrow, sources said.
Instead, Mr Mannion is due to announce at Stormont that from early next year Aer Lingus will operate a new route from Belfast International Airport to Heathrow. The airline will also announce seven additional routes from the airport at Aldergrove, some 14 miles northwest of Belfast, to Barcelona, Rome, Faro, Budapest, Malaga, Geneva and Amsterdam.
The development will create some 100 jobs at Aldergrove. Initially, Aer Lingus is to base three aircraft at the airport with four daily flights to Heathrow, sources said. The additional competition in the NI market is also expected to reduce flight prices.
DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson is due to chair the press conference at Stormont where the announcement will be made. First Minister Dr Paisley, and Sinn Féin junior Minister Gerry Kelly, will join the airline executives for the announcement - reflecting how this is viewed as a key project for the North.
Aer Lingus also sees this as an important development and part of its long-term programme to expand its operations, and establish an additional base outside the Republic. The company had also considered creating a new base at Manchester, Birmingham or Edinburgh but settled for Aldergrove because it believed it had the greater potential, sources said.
"Northern Ireland is now in a new space . . . Its private sector isn't particularly strong - it's probably where the Republic was 15 years ago - but there is a real opportunity for growth," said one senior source.
Belfast International Airport, commonly known as Aldergrove, opens up a new NI market of some 1.7 million people for Aer Lingus, not to mention travellers from the Border counties in the Republic who will also be targeted to use the airport, company sources said.
Moreover, Aldergrove with some five million passengers per year, compared to over 20 million at Dublin airport, is less congested, and this could attract passengers who would normally use Dublin. Company sources stressed that while some passengers might prefer Aldergrove to Dublin for this reason, particularly during the current building programme, the main motivation for the move was to attract new business. "There is room for growth at Aldergrove and that simply isn't the case at Shannon," said one source.
