Sir, - London City Airport has many attractions for travellers. It's a nice airport, it's conveniently located, it seldom has air traffic delays and it used to be served by CityJet and Jersey European, which offered friendly, moderately efficient service and a bite of breakfast.
Better still, the fares were reasonable. Returns started at £62 for a restricted ticket. A ticket you could change cost £131 (these prices are in sterling; the Aer Lingus prices quoted are in punts).
All that has changed. Aer Lingus has taken over the route and the equivalent to Jersey European's £131 sterling ticket is not £200, not £280 but £301. Even allowing for the exchange rate, that's an extra £145 or thereabouts. When I rang the Aer Lingus press office they said the prices were "competitive". Competitive with whom? There are no competitors on the route. "With the market," came the reply.
Aer Lingus is a semi-State body. So its policies are driven, not by shareholders, but by decisions at management level. In this case, the decision seems to be that the Irish public is there to be fleeced, whenever a monopoly situation occurs.
Having almost bankrupted itself in the attempt to put Ryanair (which had the gall to break the last monopoly situation by offering realistic Dublin-London fares) out of business, Aer Lingus still seems set on a corporate policy marked by a profound contempt for the people it claims - so vociferously and at such expense - to serve.
In behaving like this, Aer Lingus management is stripping the airline of its most valuable assets: the public's perception (largely borne out in practice) that the people at the coal-face - the crews and ground staff - are enthusiastic, friendly and good at their jobs; and the public good will that flows from this. Those assets are finite and, once stripped away, are very hard to replace or renew.
Not long ago, Aer Lingus ran a fatuous campaign which said: "Nothing beats intuition" (they really did). I can think of some things off the top of my head that beat intuition in Aer Lingus's case. Not doubling the ticket price as soon as a route falls into your lap would be just one of them. - Yours, etc.,
Barry Devlin, Dalkey Avenue, Dalkey, Co Dublin.