AER ARANN ANNOUNCE OR RATHER DON'T ANNOUNCE CANCELLATION OF HALF CORK TO BELFAST SERVICES. ROUTE NOW TOTALLY UNVIABLE.
February 1, 2010. Aer Arann in their death wish have quietly dropped some half of their services to Belfast. This means that it is no longer possible to do a day return from either end which is the main reason for the route surviving at all. This is suicide and can only hasten their demise. It now means that Aer Arann will lose € 250,000 per annum on the route. Cork Airport refused to support the route with reasonable airport fees. So does Dublin screw Cork.
BMIBABY TO WITHDRAW MANCHESTER SERVICES ANOTHER COUP FOR CORK AIRPORT MARKETING
February 1, 2010. BMI are withdrawing all services from Cork to Manchester effective in April. This is another coup for our superb marketing team at Cork Airport who are extremely rapidly approaching their own goal of no flights at all coming to Cork.
AER LINGUS ANNOUNCE WITHDRAWAL OF ONE DAILY HEATHROW ROUNDTRIP
February 1, 2010. Aer Lingus are withdrawing one of their five daily return services to London this summer. This remarkable event according to Cork airport management will result in an increase in the number of tourists coming from Heathrow to Cork – such is their unusual thinking. As usual no effort was made by Cork Airport to retain the service.
AER ARANN SPIN DOCTOR AND CORPORATE AFFAIRS DIRECTOR ANDREW KELLY USELESS AND SHOULD BE FIRED
February 1, 2010. There is a guy called Andrew Kelly who is Director of Corporate Affairs at Aer Arann. This is the guy who makes all the public announcements on behalf of Aer Arann. He is also a pompous prig who will not talk to the public. His job as Corporate Affairs Director is to explain Aer Arann to the public and not sit on his high throne and refuse to talk to anyone.
On January 22nd, 2010, I called him to ask a simple question as a result of his wondrous press release of the new agreement between Aer Lingus and Aer Arann. Who was covering the losses of the agreement?
He gave me the good news that he was refusing to discuss ANYTHING with me relative to Aer Arann and certainly not explain anything, much less the press release. Is it not strange that this guy who is paid probably over € 100,000 per annum will not even discuss what he says? He obviously presumes that once he issues a statement, just like the Pope he cannot be questioned on it. What he has Gina Kelly, who goes by the title of Media and Communications manager paid another € 100,000 for, beggars belief. No wonder the airline is going broke.
He also said that some of the things I had already said about Aer Arann was actionable so I invited him to the Four Goldmines and said I looked forward to an action. I would have a ball cross-examining the Aer Arann executives on the state of their company. It would be all my dreams come true! When faced with the prospect of spending € 500,000 for suing me when I tell the truth he seemed to back off. I even offered him a commission to sue me!
Let's give him something to sue about. Aer Arann is broke and is on life support from the Irish taxpayer. Sue now if you dare!
I pointed out to him that I never write anything that I believe to be untrue so I invited him to do one of two things:
First tell me what I had written that was incorrect and I promised to correct it immediately or
Secondly he could write his version which I would publish unedited on the website. He declined either offer.
All this illustrates only too well two things about Aer Arann management. They are incompetent, have their heads in the sand like an ostrich and you know where presented to the public! Above all never tell Padraig anything he does not want to hear and pretend everything is perfect while the company goes down the spout.
The Aer Arann approach to business can best be illustrated by the following cautionary tale in which they continue to ride the dead horse!
My tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However in the airline business we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:
Buy a stronger whip.
Change riders.
Threaten the horse with termination.
Say things like, “This is the way we have always ridden this horse”.
Appoint a committee to study the horse.
Arrange to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
Lower the standards so that dead horses can be included.
Appoint a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
Ride the dead horse “outside the box.”
Buy a commercial off-the-shelf dead horse.
Create a training session to increase our riding ability.
Reclassify the dead horse as “living-impaired.”
Compare the state of dead horses in today's environment.
Change the autopsy report to declare that “This horse is not dead.”
Kill all the other horses, so this one will look the same.
Name the dead horse “Paradigm Shift” and keep riding it.
Ride the dead horse “smarter” not harder.
Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
Do a time management study to see if the lighter riders would improve productivity.
Declare that “No horse is too dead to beat.”
Call the dead horse a “joint venture” and let others ride it.
Provide additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
Do a cost analysis study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
Purchase an aftermarket product to make dead horses run faster.
Declare the horse is “better, faster, and cheaper” dead.
Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
Declare that “This horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.”
Get the horse a Web site.
Promote the horse to a supervisory position.
ANOTHER CAPTAIN ABANDONS THE TITANIC.
February 1, 2010.
Niall Walsh, an Aer Lingus veteran has resigned following Sean Coyle. Again I think Christoph Mueller was correct in dumping Walsh as he was one of the perpetrators of the Aer Lingus disaster. There are a few more who would not be missed either including Enda Corneille and the IT Manager.
RYANAIR ANNOUNCE WITHDRAWAL OF SERVICES FROM CORK TO DUBLIN ROUTE.
February 1, 2010. Effective April 1, Ryanair are reducing their services from Cork to Dublin to three round trips on weekdays. Having seen Aer Arann off the route they are now withdrawing their own services slowly but steadily. It is likely they will completely withdraw from the route shortly. There is no flight now from Dublin to Cork after 6.20 p.m. which of course screws Aer Lingus passengers. To protect themselves Aer Lingus need to operate a service from Cork to Dublin at 5.40 a.m. returning at 10.30 p.m. Why not their new franchise partners?
AER LINGUS ANNOUNCE KISS OF DEATH FOR AER ARANN
February 1, 2010. The level of incompetency at the top of Irish companies, whether it be banks, developers or airlines beggars belief and the following press announcement is a classic case of the blind leading the blind. It comes from Andrew and Gina Kelly and I quote (My comments in italic brackets):
Tuesday January 26th 2010: Aer Arann and Aer Lingus have today announced that agreement has been reached to establish a franchise arrangement between the two airlines.
Under this franchise agreement Aer Arann will operate 12 routes from Dublin and Cork . The routes will include current Aer Lingus and Aer Arann routes as well as 3 new routes.
These franchise services will be branded as “Aer Lingus Regional” and operated using Aer Arann ATR 72-500 aircraft and crew. (Didn't we see this before with Aer Lingus commuter which went up the spout?) All franchise flights will be sold and distributed through www.aerlingus.com . (Apart from the fact that the IT Manager in Aer Lingus has made no effort to prove through bookings on foot of the agreement which is plain stupid!) Aer Arann will assume full operational and commercial responsibility for the services covered by the franchise agreement ( this means that Aer Arann will shoulder all the losses which will now be much larger!)with Aer Lingus receiving a franchise fee in recognition for providing its brand and product suite to Aer Arann (which means that not alone will Aer Arann have greater losses but they will pay Aer Lingus money for the privilege of having them. Somebody has to be loony.).
The new agreement significantly increases Aer Lingus presence in the Ireland-UK market with new services to Ireland from Bristol , Blackpool, Cardiff , Doncaster/Sheffield, Durham , Glasgow and Edinburgh in addition to new seasonal services from Cork to Jersey in the Channel Islands and La Rochelle in France.
Welcoming the new agreement Aer Lingus Chief Executive Mr. Christoph Mueller said “This franchise agreement is good news for all stakeholders in Aer Lingus as it will allow us to serve key regional destinations, linking them with our Dublin transatlantic network as well as offering our business and leisure customers improved schedule and frequency options.” (That would be assuming that his booking website was able to take these passengers which it clearly is not!)
Aer Arann Chief Executive Mr. Paul Schutz also welcomed the agreement calling it “a major development for Irish aviation and the tourism industry.” (Bullshit!) The combined strengths of both airlines, including brand power and market presence, will allow us to offer a quality customer product that meets the capacity requirements of existing and new routes. (He calls charging for bags and for refreshments offering a quality customer product – something Aer Arann to their credit, have not done to date!)
Aer Arann is a leading regional airline that is wholly-owned by its Chairman, Padraig O'Ceidigh. (and who runs it as his own personal fiefdom using Irish taxpayers money for which he makes no account!) In addition to operating routes for Aer Lingus Regional the airline will continue to operate under its own Aer Arann brand on routes within Ireland , from Ireland to the UK and France and from the Isle of Man to London and Paris (which is a pretty miserable rump of their once extensive route network) .
Aer Arann Media Contacts:
Andrew Kelly
Aer Arann
Tel: +353 1 844 7733
+353 85 711 7711
Email: andrew.kelly@aerarann.com
Gina Kelly
Aer Arann
Tel: +353 1 844 7788
+353 86 780 5451
Email: gina.kelly@aerarann.com
Notes
:
The following routes and frequencies will be covered by this franchise agreement.
The Dublin-Glasgow route will increase to up to four roundtrips per day . (YOU CAN'T TURN A ROUTE WITH ONE LOSSMAKING SERVICE PER DAY INTO A PROFIT BY ADDING FOUR ROUND TRIPS. IT DEFIES ALL THE LAWS OF ECONOMICS!)
The Dublin-Edinburgh route will see an Aer Lingus daily service supplemented by two Aer Arann round-trip services, one in the morning and one in the evening. (THIS TIME THEY ARE TURNING ONE LOSSMAKER INTO A BIGGER LOSSMAKER BY TRIPLING THE SERVICES. Between Edinburgh and Glasgow two services per day now become eight. There is no market there for this type of expansion and it is totally crazy. On rough figures Aer Arann will lose € 7,000 per day or about € 2 million on all its routes to Edinburgh or Glasgow alone. Where is the money to come from?)
Dublin to Cardiff 3 Daily roundtrips. (One too many)
Dublin to Blackpool Daily service (Never made money for anyone)
Dublin to Doncaster/Sheffield Daily service (Three a week would be more than enough)
Dublin to Durham Tees Valley 6 roundtrips per week. (Likewise)
A new service will be launched from Cork to Glasgow with six roundtrip services per week (excluding Tuesdays). (A TOTAL AND UTTER LOSSMAKER. NOBODY EVER MADE THIS ROUTE WORK AND AER ARANN TRIED IT BEFORE AND LOST THEIR SHIRT AS DID RYANAIR)
Cork to Bristol 6 roundtrips per week
Cork to Edinburgh 11 roundtrips per week
Cork to Cardiff Daily service
Cork to La Rochelle 2 weekly. (You cannot make money on a twice weekly service!)
Cork Jersey 2 weekly
Passengers who hold existing bookings on any of the services covered by this agreement will have their bookings amended and new travel documents will be issued without charge. Aer Arann will proactively contact each passenger with information on changes to their flight bookings
Aer Arann will continue to operate its own route network including flights between:
Galway and London Luton, Manchester , Edinburgh , Dublin and Lorient
Waterford and London Luton, Manchester , Birmingham , Galway and Lorient
Cork and Dublin and Belfast. ( Call once a day to Belfast and twice to Dublin a service?)
Donegal and Glasgow and Dublin
FINAL COMMENT:
Aer Arann have effectively gone out of business to the UK and have sold their sold to Aer Lingus. They are paying Aer Lingus to sell their seats for them and have absolutely no control over the sales. It is total and utter lunacy. To make matters worse they have taken away the only advantages they had such as short checkin, free baggage, reasonable in-flight service contrary to all their principles. Whatever about Andrew Kelly who is only a mouthpiece, whoever agreed to this deal in Aer Arann has sealed the airlines fate and it is a tragedy as Ireland desperately needs them. Like the bankers, Padraig O'Ceidigh and his cohorts have hunkered down, give no explanations and just will take the taxpayer for all they can get without giving any explanation. Andrew Kelly even refuses to discuss the agreement, but that does not stop him trumpeting it! He does not seem to see he has any obligation to explain anything to the public. That is no way for a Corporate Affairs Director to behave. Fire him!
THE CONSPIRACY THEORY
A friend in the Department says that the entire agreement is because it is known Aer Arann will go broke, Aer Lingus will take over the routes directly and this in turn will enable the Government to subsidise Aer Lingus and keep them out of Ryanairs clutches! Think about it as it does make sense!
The final say lies with Noel Dempsey and unless he introduces rules for Irish aviation, the current free for all can only result I the loss of Aer Arann and Aer Lingus which in my view would be a tragedy for the country and on a par with the banking crisis in terms of social consequences. The industry has to be regulated.
CORK AIRPORT WISHES TO APOLOGISE FOR THE STUPIDITY OF LIAM KAVANAGH, HEAD HR, IRISH AVIATION AUTHORITY AND MICHAEL LANDERS IMPACT UNION FOR THE DISRUPTION TODAY.
January 20, 2010. When it comes to stupidity the Irish are hard to beat and when it comes to stupidity Irish semi-states and Irish unions are even harder to beat as was clearly indicated today by the Air Traffic Controllers strike.
Cork Airport unreservedly apologises for the stupidy shown by Liam Kavangh, HR Manager of the Irish Airports Authority, who precipitated the strike, Michael Landers, Assistant General Secretary of the trade Union IMPACT, and Michael O'Leary for his opportunism in cancelling flights there was no need to cancel.
First, Liam Kavanagh. This stupid fool must have known that the action of his masters could have no other consequences than the walkout of the air traffic controllers. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, no competent HR Manager would have contemplated what happened yesterday and it was no way to run the IAA and it was no way to behave. His action and his alone caused the chaos and mayhem. He is a stupid fool and should be fired.
Next the brain dead dodo Michael Landers. To watch him on television explaining the unexplainable was looking at an old style dinosaur who has no place in the modern world. His Union does not care about the public and neither does he. He is also a liar. This issue is about money and he said the opposite. While we have people like him running the unions in Ireland there is no hope.
Then we come to the opportunists. First, Michael O'Leary and Ryanair. While he is right in what he says about the IAA he jumped on the bandwagon by cancelling flights he had no need to cancel because the passenger loads were so low that he made money by not going and yet used the IAA as an excuse. The 1250 from Cork to Gatwick today January 20, was such an example.There was no reason for cancelling this flight. FR 211 and FR 216 were other examples and there were many. He effectively cancelled over twenty flights to make a point with the government and the public suffered. That is noway to run an airline, not that Ryanair ever cared about its passengers.
And what did our Minister for Maltese Transport, Mr. Noel Dempsey do this week? The same as last week when the snow crisis hit. Nothing. He stuck his head, ostrich like, into the sand, with his ass in the air, and when that happens you know what part of him is visible to the public and it is not a pretty sight. Not one single thing did he or his Department do to rectify the situation other than the usual bleating that he has no control, even though it is a semi-state organisation under his control. Another stupid fool.
Then what about our own organisation Dublin Airport Authority - Cork Airport Authority? Not a peep out of any of the Board or the Management. Its called lack of leadership! So we apologise on behalf of Liam Kavanagh, Michael Landers, Noel Dempsey, David Dilger, Declan Collier, Pat Keohane and Michael O'Leary, and we apologise unreservedly for their actions which clearly show that none of them give a damn about the public and we can only further apologise for the fact that they claim to be Irish whereas in reality no genuine Irishman would behave the way they did. And don't expect things to get better!
AER ARANN AGAIN IN DIRE TROUBLE
January 18, 2010. As you may have read in the news Aer Lingus have been asked to consider taking Aer Arann over owing to their dire financial plight. Aer Arann are not helping themselves either in that this week and next week they have suddenly without warning dropped their morning Cork to Belfast flight due to lack of enough passengers. This is catch 22. Drop the flight and you lose even more money, not to mention passengers.
The saddest thing of this is the total ineptness of their management and their CEO Paul Schutz seem totally unwilling or unable to take the obvious steps to rescue the airline. Ireland needs Aer Arann but if you have people determined on committing suicide there is little you can do.
NEXT AER LINGUS BOO-BOOS ON GATWICK
January 17, 2010. Aer Lingus have just announced a twice daily service from Cork to Gatwick which is wonderful for the people of Cork. The problem is that nobody has ever made the route go and it is littered with carcases including Dan Air, Easyjet and now Ryanair cannot give the seats away on their one daily service. Enter the bold Aer Lingus with fourteen flights a week tripling the capacity on a route which might gain 10%. Somebody has to be mad and Aer Lingus will lose their shirt.
The rationale from my sources in Aer Lingus is strange. It is that they know it will not work and they will drop it after the summer, transfer the plane and have cheap Gatwick crews transferred to Heathrow to run the service from there and get rid of the expensive Cork crews.
What has to be very worrying is what sort of stupid fools enticed CEO Mueller into going along with them. Either they fed him a bunch of false statistics as to its prospect of success with the hope of undermining him eventually or else he was stupid enough not to challenge what they told him. Neither explanation is pretty and bodes ill for Mr,. Mueller. Nobody on the board of Aer Lingus has a clue anyhow - not one of them has any airline experience - so they will not object. It is just another nail in the Aer Lingus coffin thought up by an inept desperate management trying to do something with their Gatwick airplanes. Out of the frying pan into the fire indeed!
ANOTHER STUPID AER LINGUS/CORK AIRPORT MANAGEMENT DECISION.
.
The story takes some beating and really pioves conclusively that morons end up at the top of public companies. Tbe bridge had an accident. It was repaired. Aer Lingus said the repair was unsafe. The airport said no, it was safe. Like two kids screaming at each other they passed the buck while the passengers got soaked. I understand it has nothing to do with money and right now my gut feeling is that Aer Lingus management are refusing to sanction the use of the bridge. If Christoph Mueller cannot get his lot to make a simple decision like using the one airbridge that is there, then heaven help him with major decisions. In my book, if that bridge is not used it is his fault and he is a stupid fool and should go.
CORK AIRPORT NEWS
December 20, 2009.
WE WISH EVERYONE A HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A VERY PROSPEROUS 2010
GERRY WALSHS KIP SHOP
In September 2009 I told Cork airport Management to clean the baggage hall. Nothing was done. Following is current state of play. It's a disgrace and an insult to the people of Cork.
1. Declan Collier Pockets € 100,000.
1. DECLAN COLLIER, CHIEF EXECUTIVE CORK AIRPORT STEALS MONEY FROM IRISH TAXPAYER. HE POCKETS € 100,000 PER ANNUM FROM AIB.
In case you did not know Declan Collier who presides over the biggest airport disaster in Europe, otherwise known as Dublin Airport, not to mention Cork and Shannon Airports is paid € 638,000 per annum to lose the company's shirt. This is the guy that insisted on spending € 400 million of the taxpayers money on Terminal 2 at Dublin when Michael O Leary offered to build it for free, thereby screwing the taxpayer. Not content with already fleecing the taxpayer he has now been put on the board of AIB Bank by Brian Lenihan and while we all thought he did it out of the kindness of his heart to try and save the country, it now turns out he is getting a fee of € 100,000 per annum plus € 3,000 for every meeting he attends. In any event he knows nothing about banking and is supposed to protect us the taxpayers while he screws us at the same time. Another member of the golden circle being looked after by Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan.
We, the taxpayers are forking out billions to the banks, and while our children, our old, our poor and mentally and physically deficient are screwed by the golden circle government this guy goes and steals another € 100,000 of the taxpayers money. He is stealing from the taxpayer and is another gangster. If he had any decency or guts he would refuse the fee. All in all he getting about € 750,000 per annum from the taxpayer. Who said anything about a € 500,000 cap? It is indecent and disgusting and shows his contempt for us. Has he not enough to do in sorting the Dublin Airport Authority out without being involved in AIB for which he cannot have time.
2. WHO IS THE LOOPY ONE?
This one like most of them is another example of the profligate waste that occurs in the Cork Airport Executive. Not content with their nice duty free operation and nice duty free bags, some bloody fool decided to spend € 250,000 rebranding it as the “The Loop” which the nut says is “The future of Airport Shopping”. While it may be accepted that the guy who thought it up was crazy, how can any rational executive or board allow this waste of money. They seem to think they are totally non-accountable to the public.
3. WHO IS LYING ABOUT CORK AIRPORT CHARGES?.
If you book from Cork Airport to say Dublin, Aer Arann in their list of extras charge you € 24.38 from Cork airport and € 16.38 from Dublin. From Cork to Belfast they charge € 31.88 and from Belfast to Cork € 34.04. From Cork to Edinburgh it is € 39.88 and € 32.11 back. Ryanair on the other hand charge charge € 26.22 from Cork and € 25.87 back even thought they have a much heavier airplane. To Liverpool it is the same € 26.22 going out but € 35.92 back. Now everyone knows the average charge out of Cork airport is approximately € 7 per passenger so it is obvious that both Ryanair and Aer Arann are lying through their teeth and overcharging the passenger and nobody says anything. The Board at Cork Airport are there to protect the passenger and in this case fail dismally in their duty.
4. CORK AIRPORT HEADED FOR DISASTER - PASSENGER FEES DOUBLE.
December 4, 2009 and Cathal Guiomard, the useless Irish Aviation Regulator announced increases in passenger charges for Dublin Airport which mean that the cost per passenger this year will rise from € 7.39 to € 19.32 which is a 261% - yes 261% - increase. Even worse he has made it conditional on completing the unecessary, useless, expensive Terminal 2. And believe it or not, the Dublin Chamber of Commerce welcomed the decision, saying that the real problem is additional surcharges applied by individual airlines! The charges do not hurt fat cats!
He had not got the guts to stand up to Noel Dempsey who issued the directive to increase the charges and then make up his own mind. .
Airports all over the UK and Continental Europe are lowering charges, in some case to zero, to attract tourism growth and protect jobs. Only in Ireland can a hapless government regulator sanction a 261% increase in airport charges for a government-owned airport monopoly, at the express instruction of the corrupt Department of Transport. Tourism is in decline, passenger numbers are disappearing and the government response is to jack passenger charges 261%. It is total and utter lunacy and shows a government mindset and a a Ministerial brain totally bereft of intelligence. What you do is lower charges to increase business as any fool will tell you. When business slackens for Ryanair, they lower their fares - and make even more money. But with a board of cleaning ladies standard at the Dublin Airport Authority what do you expect? It wll cost Ireland about 100,000 jobs and bankrupt Aer Lingus,. Aer Arann and many hotels.
And the DAA's reply was that the charges offer value for money. Perhaps they would say who authorised such a stupid statement. The tragedy is that it will finish Shannon and destroy Cork Airport and nobody in Cork cares. Not a peep from our board.This decision has to be the most stupid of many stupids. Can nobody see the entire aviation policy as run from Kildare Street is going to destroy tourism and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs? This plus € 20 million loss this year is the fate of Cork. It is interesting that Ministers Batt O'Keeffe, Miceal Martin and Cork T.D. Noel O Flynn voted for the increases in charges and supported the crippling of Cork airport with debt. They also voted against allowing it run itself. Hypocrites of the highest order.
5. CORK AIRPORTS SHOP IS CRIPPLED AND BOARD DO NOTHING.
Ryanairs refusal to allow passengers to purchase in the shop at Cork Airport and bring it on board is crippling sales. Is there a protest from the airport board or management? Not a word. Here is our own shop being crippled by an airline and we do nothing about it. If ever there was a case for airline regulation then this is it.
What is Chairman Gerry Walsh doing or saying about it? Well, since nobody has found him yet, nothing. What I find incredible is that the Cork Airport Management may well destroy the airport but we the people of Cork do nothing about it. Not even the worker directors protest, mainly because they know they will lose their jobs if they open their mouths! I suppose you cannot blame them for having no guts. But to me it is tragic to see our own selves destroying our own airport and nobody doing anything.
Other than myself, nobody has ever protested and many workers jobs are at stake. I really think that those in management and on the Cork Airport Authority Board are really bastards who care not a whit for workers jobs and are only interested in their own € 1,000 per meeting. Somebody better do something. The Minister does nothing.He does not care.And to make it worse, Damien Lenagh, the Dublin Airport Authority Human Resources Manager, wrote to all the duty Managers, pointed out they were no longer needed and if they wanted to go, fine! Imagine treating your staff with up to thirty years service like that! Damien Lenagh should be fired for incompetence.
6. TRANSPORT MINISTER NOEL DEMPSEY SCREWS THE TAXPAYER.
Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey has a strange attitude to your money. The following says it all. He spent almost € 14,000 on chauffeur services during six official trips abroad. Embarrassingly for Mr. Dempsey – who is encouraging more people to use buses and trains – he availed of public transport just once while abroad on business in two years.
Costs run up by Mr. Dempsey included almost € 950 on one night's accommodation at a Singapore hotel, and € 324 claimed for purchases of cufflinks. The taxpayer also covered the cost of a € 429 courier bill so that a framed painting, which Mr. Dempsey said he had been unexpectedly presented with by an Irish-Australian business association, could be transported for the minister from Australia to Ireland. Overall Mr. Dempsey spent € 38,000 of your money during eight foreign trips since January last year.
A journey to London for a number of engagements in January last year involved € 1,326 being paid out for one day's limo use. The firm involved is run by Terry Gallagher, the son of former Fianna Fail Gaeltacht Minister Denis Gallagher who increased the price by over twice the normal rate.
Flights for Mr. Dempsey's trip to Australia in March 2008 for the St Patrick's Day celebrations cost almost € 9,000. En route, Mr. Dempsey availed of VIP services at Frankfurt airport for € 565. During a stop-off in Singapore, Mr. Dempsey stayed one night at the Shangri La at a cost of € 943. Car hire and VIP coach transfers in Singapore cost € 513. Chauffeur and car hire costs during Mr. Dempsey s nine days in Australia came to over € 6,500. The guy must not be able to drive!
He spent two nights at the Hyatt Hotel in Canberra, at € 395 per night; one night at the Brisbane Hilton for € 308; and three nights at the Shangri La hotel, Sydney, for € 390 per night. Mr. Dempsey claimed € 1,000 in subsistence expenses. On the return journey, Mr. Dempsey availed of VIP lounges at Sydney airport, at a cost of € 181, and London Heathrow, for € 208. Cufflinks worth € 145 were also bought for the trip. Mr. Dempsey travelled to Luxembourg on the government jet for a day-long meeting of EU transport ministers in April last year. Car hire cost € 903. Minister Dempsey specialises in wasting the taxpayers money.
The same month, Mr. Dempsey travelled to Washington for former taoiseach Bertie Ahern address to the US Congress. Limo hire for the two-day visit cost € 2,112. Another one-day visit to Luxembourg in June last year involved a car hire bill of € 978. During a four-day visit to the US in November last year, Mr. Dempsey spent two nights at the Washington Marriot Hotel, for € 334 per night. A similar bill was paid for two nights at Fitzpatrick's Hotel in New York. A € 53 bar bill was also charged. This was the only trip where Mr. Dempsey used public transport. He took a train from Annapolis to New York at a cost of € 166. The cost of car hire – no doubt to follow the train – came to € 1,207.24. And this week he and his colleagues screwed the poor and the vulnerable in the budget so that he and his fellow Ministers and hangers on could have the above lifestyle.
7. CORK AIRPORT SCREWS THE ELDERLY, THE DISABLED AND THE INFIRM.
It would not happen in a third world country! Here is the story of my arrival at Cork airport on the 2nd of September 2009. I arrived on Wizzair from Katowice and we pulled up at gate 5. On disembarking I asked the Servisair representative could I use the lift and was told no. I would have to wait. I said I was not waiting in the freezing cold on the ramp and would go to the lift myself. He said I could not. I then went to the lift and he pushed me to stop me. I said he was entering dangerous territory as that was assault. He then gave me the good news that he would have me arrested if I tried to get into the building. I thought that was a brilliant idea in that I would now get to the warm terminal building quickly. He declined my kind offer to be arrested and went off.
I then went for a long walk all over around the ramp, cruised in between aircraft, around the baggage carts and other ramp vehicles and then went down to gate 7 and 8, checked the doors and finally went to the baggage hall. Nobody even challenged me or asked what I was doing. Some security that is! Now I had warned Servisair on three previous occasions that I would do this if they did not facilitate me getting from the aircraft to the building and nothing was done. Even though I reported my breach of security to the airport management, nobody was even interested. The whole system of security at Cork Airport is a joke where people go through motions like zombies with a zero end result. You are expected to walk up 41 steps with your baggage.
But better was to come. As it was pretty cold and miserable I was now in the relative warmth of the baggage hall where I discovered a filthy, filthy place which, obviously had not been cleaned for months. A typical “view” is on the front page of this publication. No wonder we are called the filthy Irish. It's a wonder Health and Safety have not closed the place down as a health hazard to the workers. Gerry Walsh is Chairman of the Airport Authority and the buck stops with him. It is his kip shop, not anyone else's and he is to blame. Do you think he will do anything? Not a chance? Why, the man can't even be found! But he is not long finding his € 1,000 every time he goes to an airport board meeting.
To continue with the saga. I could not get out of the baggage hall, other than up the baggage shute which seemed uncomfortable, so I went back out to the door. I found the Servisair representative and begged him to let me into the terminal. He declined and called a policeman. He wanted me arrested. Can you imagine arresting tourists arriving in Cork Airport all because they wanted to get from the aircraft into the terminal and use a lift because they could not walk up 41 steps to the building? What kind of customer relations is this? Tony Tully and Dorothy Coffey and the other Servisair management need to sort out their staff and fast. Maybe I am missing something but in my book you cannot go around arresting elderly people because they want to use the lift and will not or cannot climb 41 steps with their baggage.
I told the policeman that all I wanted to do was to get into the building which he thought was quite reasonable so he asked the Servisair representative to take me in. Your man was too busy and anyhow it was not his job. A lady from Servisair then came by and the policeman asked her. She was too busy also and said I would have to stay on the ramp until she had dispatched the flight – probably about another twenty minutes ! You know, you could not make this story up if you tried as nobody would believe it! The policeman finally took pity on me and brought be into the building some 24 cold minutes after I left the aircraft.
8. “YOU'LL FUCKING USE THE STAIRS LIKE EVERYONE ELSE”
If you think what happened on September 2nd. as told previously, was bad, you would not believe what happened on October 20th. 2009. Obviously Servisair management support their staff in being rude to passengers as the following shows.
I arrived on Ryanair Flight 907 from Stansted and the only person on the ramp was the Ryanair attendant. He could not leave his location. I went to the stairs and there was nobody visible. I walked to the lift hoping to meet someone and met a person whom I subsequently learned was a Brian Murphy whom I did not know, and I said I wanted to use the lift. At the time I also was taking photographs of the dirt and filth that passes for the baggage hall. His language was a superb example of the exotic Cork use of the English language and I quote “What the fuck are you doing here?” (Poles and others studying the English language, please note!)
I explained I was taking photographs of the dirt and filth and tried to explain to him that after the September 2nd. incident I had given instructions to have the baggage hall cleaned and as my instructions had not being carrried out I was photographing it again and this time it was going to be done or else. He said, continuing his erudite use of Cork english “I do not give a fuck”. He asked my name and I told him . He then tried to push me out of the baggage hall assaulting me in the process. I told him that was assault and that he could not do that. He said “I can do any fucking thing I want!” At this stage I became alarmed and asked him to call the police to protect me. He told me to fuck off. I continued taking photographs – which follow – and he hit me again. I said: “Look all I want to do is use the lift and you can't go around assaulting me like you did!” He said “You will use the fucking stairs just like everyone else”. I said: “No!”. Such a comment is totally and utterly appalling You can't behave like that to passengers and the fact that nobody i n the airport saw fit to issue an apology or do anything is nothing short of scandalous!.
This remarkable public relations effort to get a passenger, who is obviously unable to climb the stairs to do so, in the noble aspiration that the passenger might drop dead on the way up and not trouble the airport again, must go down in Cork Airport history as one of the great quotes, the runner up being the previous one of September 2nd. “I'll have you arrested!”. Cork Airport really knows how to welcome its passengers. It's called “Friendly Ireland”. I doubt if Michael O'Leary would tolerate it either. Even worse, in both cases, the Servisair staff in question did not know me so it can be safely assumed this is the way they greet all passengers and that this treatment was not especially reserved for me. That being the case Servisair should be thrown out.
There are some very serious issues involved. The first is that the airport Chairman Gerry Walsh and the Airport Manager carry the buck for the behaviour of everyone working in the airport and they cannot blame Servisair or pass off the responsibility. By allowing this to happen, and furthermore taking no action after it had happened, they have both failed totally in their duties.
Secondly it was a total and utter breach of security what I did and nobody gives a damn. The fact that on a subsequent trip I spent 32 minutes walking around the airport ramp without being challenged makes a farce of the airport security. Thirdly while I realise Servisair are being screwed into the ground by the airlines to provide ground services for less and less money, to the extent they cannot afford to provide assistance for the elderly and infirm, that is no answer. It is their responsibiltiy to provide such assistance but more to the point, under European law the responsibility is not that of Servisair but that of the airport.
Now next time since going in to the baggage hall for assistance seems to run the risk of my demolition, if there is nobody around, I shall borrow a ramp vehicle and drive out the gate - and I bet nobody will stop me - but do I have to do this to bring home the inept management at Cork Airport? When that happens the results will be fun. Finally, I now have no option - and I am not joking - but to apply to the Court for an injunction protecting my person when I am on airport premises as well as apply to have Ryanair arrange the lift for me and at the same time by way of a side swipe, I will apply to have the DAA and Cork Airport Authority wound up on the grounds the DAA is insolvent, run by raving lunatics and incapable of meeting its pension provisions.
Both Cork Airport Management and Servisair management better have a plan B ready to deal with me the next time as if I drive out the gate with a ramp vehicle, all hell will break loose. I want a prosecution as it will make Cork airport the laughing stock of the world and when I get through in the District Court, and the Circuit on appeal, and a judicial review to the High Court and hopefully a side trip to the Supreme Court, I guarantee Pat Keohane and Gerry Walsh will be very, very sorry people indeed, as I will destroy them and they won't have jobs much longer. But do I have to go to those extremes to ensure that the elderly and the infirm and those with slightly diminished mobility have immediate access to the lifts at Cork airport? Pat Keohanes refusal to allow passengers to use the lifts is ludicrous by any standards and shows the warped mentality of the management of Cork Airport. And as for Servisair they had better sort their act out too and get their staff to behave as they should. And do not think I am joking! They all better have their plan B ready as until I get my way I guarantee I will cause chaos at every opportunity.
It beggars belief that Gerry Walsh and Pat Keohane insist on this. What is their hangup about letting people use the lift as happens in every other airport? People who do this to the elderly are bastards. I just hope when they are old they do not have to suffer the same indignities they inflict on the current elderly. But Gerry and Pat could solve the problem overnight, if they wanted to but they simply have no interest in doing so. Could someone answer two questions for me? First how come we appoint such ignorant, callous, screw the elderly people to responsible positions in our society and secondly how can they themselves do this to the vulnerable in society? Gerry and Pat why will you not fix the problem?
This is how Cork airport greets its passengers. Arrest them! Who is responsible? First and foremost Servisair who have spectacularly failed in their duty to the passengers they handle. To be fair to them they are being screwed into the ground by the airlines on price so they cannot afford to look after the passengers. But that is no excuse. Next to blame is Pat Keohane who says it is not his business. Well, it is! He runs the airport as executive and cannot wash his hands of it. Finally Gerry Walsh and his useless incompetent board are responsible, But everyone says it is someone else's fault. Not me, Guv!
For the last time, I am now warning Cork Airport Management that unless they provide passengers with direct access to the lifts I am going to deliberately provoke an incident which will have unforeseen consequences for them and it appears not very difficult to provoke the Servisair staff to hit me hard enough that I end up in hospital or a policemen to arrest me and the do not blame me for the consequences. It will make every newspaper in the country, not to mention the radio and TV. My patience is at an end.
9. 32 MINUTES WALKING ON THE RAMP – CORK AIRPORT SECURITY IS A FARCE.
On November 7, 2009 I arrived on Wizzair, again from Katowice. This time there was nobody at all on the ramp to help me use the lift. I then went for a 32 minute walk all the way up beyond the cargo terminal and back and was never even challenged once. I even walked around an arriving Aer Lingus aircraft. I then went into the filthy baggage hall, discussed elsewhere, and was then threathened with arrest. I volunteered to be arrested but unfortunately the airport policeman declined. I pointed out there is no use making threats if you are not prepared to carry them out and that he had therefore lost all his credibility. Stupid fool! And Servisair management condone it, see nothing wrong with it and do nothing about it. Not even an apology. I wonder if their management come from the same family as certain bishops as they share the same desire to ignore reality.
But what does it say for the so called security at Cork Airport when in three successive weeks in a row I walk all over the ramp and nobody does anything about it? It shows the total ineptitude of Cork Airport Management. Security at Cork Airport is a joke. The National Civil Aviation Security Committee says it is not their problem. Their identities are a state secret so the public cannot have any contact with them. Nobody knows who they are, what they do and if they actually do any work at all. All I can say is that they are mostly failed civil servants who need extra money and I could be jailed for even saying that!
10. JOHN CRONIN RETIRES
We are very sad to report the retirement of John Cronin, Aer Lingus Station Manager, at Cork Airport after thirty two years service. John managed to keep Aer Lingus standards high despite all the pressure on him from Dublin to lower them and he will be sorely missed. Cork regular passengers know that John and his staff left no stone unturned and would go to any lengths to make sure passengers got what they needed.(Servisair staff please note!) We wish him well in his retirement. Thanks John. Good luck!
11. YANKEE GO HOME! WE DONT WANT YOU IN CORK!
Ryanair have instituted a new charge of € 20 at Cork airport for U.S. passport holders to travel from Cork Airport. Not alone that but they make the passengers go back down to the ticket desk, pay it and then go through security all over again. I saw this happen to one elderly couple and it would make you cry as they were simply barely able to do it. It is scandalous treating U.S. citizens like this and again Pat Keohane and his team do nothing about it. What sort of society are we when we treat Americans, particularly elderly Americans, like this at Cork Airport? The problem of course, is that this happens only when boarding the flight and of course the passengers miss their flight - and connections - and then have to buy an instant ticket for the next flight at € 242 oneway to London. It certainly suits Ryanair but what is Pat Keohane doing about it? I will tell you, sweet damn all! Servisair, their agents, tell me that it is to check that Americans are not running around the country without visas. What a load of crap!
On April 6, Servisair forced four young American tourists to fork out over € 1,000 to go to London after throwing them off the aircraft because they were U.S. citizens and had not paid then € 20 fee for being American. Tony Tully, Servisair Chief Executive should be ashamed that his company behaves in this manner. And equally to blame are Pat Keohane and Gerry Walsh for doing nothing about it. What is happening at Cork Airport to American tourists is nothing short of a national scandal and must stop. The Minister, the Cork Airport Board and Servisair have to make it quite clear to Michael O Leary this will not be tolerated.
12. AIRPORT BOARD DECIDE TO CUT FORTY JOBS!
Following the Dublin Airport Authority decision to make about 350 staff redundant, the Cork Airport Board meeting have now decided to cut up to 40 jobs from the airport staff as quickly as possible, using compulsory redundancies if necessary, so as to prove they are total puppets and do whatever their Dublin masters decide. In other words they will take it out on the staff! How about a few compulsory board directors being made redundant? Oh, No! To hell with the staff.
13. CORK BOARD DECIDE TO SPEND € 1.4 MILLION MOVING A WALL!
They finally made a major decision. They approved € 1.4 million, yep € 1.4 million to move the glass wall at the airside of the restaurant upstairs to the middle of room. What kind of stupids are these people? € 10,000 should do it. The rest of the € 1.4 million is going by way of backhanders and as profits to friends. They also said it was to be kept secret until it was done in case I found out! The wasted money would save thirty of the 40 jobs likely to go and the money for the other 10 could probably be got from abolishing the Board in the first place. Do they take the public for fools? Sorry, I asked the question! Don't answer it!
14. BLAME THE TAXI DRIVERS!
This is really hilarious. Outside the departures entrance there is a sign saying “TAXIS”. But there are no taxis there. They are all on the other side. Why? Because the Airport Management figured that if they put up a no parking sign then nobody would pay any attention to it but by putting up a taxi sign, the public are so afraid of the taxi drivers they would not dream of parking there! And it works. Talk of an Irish solution to an Irish problem! Only in Ireland.
15. WE WANT LEAKS!
We invite anyone working at the airport or at the Department of Transport or the DAA to send uscopies of secret or other relevant documents they come across and we guarantee not to identify the suppliers. Either send a copy to: Dr. Michael Grimes, Grianan House, Tramore Road, Cork or e-mail to greatsouthern@hotmail.com or telephone 087-240-555-0. We need to know what our civil servants and those in the DAA are up to and the only way to find out for sure is by way of leaked documents.
So send them in. Thanks to staff friends we already have access to all documents in Pat Keohanes office which is a good start. What Directors spend in expenses is of particular interest and what free flights they take.
16. AS THE BISHOPS AND CARDINALS LIE, SO ALSO DO THE CORK AIRPORT BOARD
This happened last May 7, 2009 but for those of you who did not hear of it, it is worth repeating. If you wanted to make this up and did so, nobody would believe you, but this latest story of the thieving board of Cork Airport takes some beating.
Believe it or not they actually hired one Gavin Duffy to come, to their Board meeting and teach them how to lie at a cost of € 3,500 to the taxpayer. Mr. Duffys blurb says “He's a bit like a great football manager. Training is tough but enjoyable and clients know it was worthwhile when they see the results. As well as interviewing better, clients tend to think more clearly and act more decisively and that's good for business.” What a load of crap!
But there is even better to come. The next quote certainly has been lifted from Brittas of the Brittas Empire fame: “So what's a good start? A good start is achieving the following - saying something the listener, viewer or reader agrees with, and then, forcing the interviewer to ask you a question. In other words build your case from points of agreement, and set the agenda.”
Here is what his site says : “ What You Will Learn. The training session will be a highly intensive, practical workshop delivered in a morning or afternoon session (all for only € 3,500 of the taxpayers money!).”
It will cover:
Why you will improve 100% with this training (Easy if you are only 10% in the first place!)
Example: Let's pick a really difficult one. You are being asked to confirm 40 job losses at your company. Remember the two things; firstly say something most people will agree with, and secondly force the next question.
“Yes we are to seek up to 40 redundancies and will immediately start negotiations with our employees. A decision like this is never an easy one, and for our colleagues the prospect of being laid off in this economic downturn makes a very bad situation even worse. (No one can argue with that)”. I think what they all want to know is, what is the timeframe we need to do this is in, and are the other remaining jobs at the plant safe? ” You have to get the Interviewer has to ask “And are the other jobs safe? Or, Yes, what is the timeframe?”
Now lets call a spade a spade. Gavin Duffy is a person who makes his living teaching people how to lie effectively. The Board of Cork Airport are thieves stealing taxpayers money to improve their own performance. If I want to improve my performance I pay for it out of my own pocket. It is totally wrong that the taxpayers should pay for improving the boards skills in lying - not that they are that bad in the first place! What Gerry Walsh needs it for is beyond the human mind as he cannot even be found, much less interviewed. But to hire people like Gavin Duffy who only spout crap is a disgraceful waste of the taxpayers money. Who authorised it? Gerry Walsh and Pat Keohane!
The only thing Gavin Duffys firm is good at is parting people from their money for no useful benefit. If he advocates people lying through their teeth or being economical with the truth then he is doing the people of Ireland a disservice, not that that would bother him so as long as he gets paid! In my view he is a conman and has no place near Cork Airport or its board.
Does anybody care? No! Will anybody do anything about it? No! I had expected better of the worker directors who gave me the illusion that they were honest but they obviously have gone native. Put simply anyone who condones the above is a crook stealing from the taxpayer. Anyone who does it is a thief. So Q.E.D. the board of the Cork airport Authority are a bunch of thieves.Why do they need to lie in the first place? I am surprised they did not invite Cardinal O'Connell, who is a self acknowledged expert, to give the next session.
We go back to Gavin Duffy referred to above. I further quote from his website:
Company Name: Media Training Email: info@mediatraining.ie Telephone: +353 (0) 87 9111 68
Address: MediaTraining : 7/8 Upper Mount Street, Dublin 2. Ireland
THERE IS NO COMPANY OR BUSINESS NAME REGISTERED IN IRELAND CALLED MEDIA TRAINING.
The company is not listed in the telephone directory, probably because it does not have a Dublin phone or fax. How strange for such an important company.
In short media training does not exist and is a con job. Just in case I am being unfair I invite that master of communications Gavin Duffy to respond and I will post his response unedited on this website but I will also expect a copy of his registration certificate.
Who decided to have Gavin Duffy? Gerry Walsh and Pat Keohane. I await Gavin Duffys response with baited breath and going on his reputation it should be a masterpiece of communication and will no doubt give me great pleasure pulling the crap he will spout to pieces. I am waiting Gavin!
17. HOW CORK AIRPORT IS CURRENTLY RUN.
1. Cork Airport is a part of the Dublin Airport Authority run by Dublin morons otherwise known as the Dublin Airport Authority..
2. Cork Airport has not now, and will not, in the future, have any say, good, bad or indifferent, in any financial decision affecting it. All decisions will be made in Dublin and by Minister Dempsey and his political appointees.
3. Cork does have a zero power, equally useless, do nothing, get paid, board of directors including a useless schoolteacher who knows nothing about running an airport. Paid for what? It has as Chairman an unemployed friend of the Minister who has zero airport experience. They have no money and no power and will not get it either. They are being paid € 12,000 per annum each for doing sweet damn all. It's a disgrace and I am amazed that they have the guts to accept the money. I would have expected at least one of them to have some honour! But no, alas!
4. Minister Dempsey has decided that Cork Airport is not going to become independent, now or in the future. End of matter. So why did they waste all the money on “consultants”? For that matter can anyone explain what the board of Cork Airport Authority plc is for? Nobody needs them but they are jobs for the boys - or girls as the case may be!
5. Brian Cowen, Minister Noel Dempsey and his civil servants have decided that one hundred and thirteen million euro of the cost of the new terminal is going to be paid for by Cork Airport and the people of Cork only, even if it destroys Cork Airport, as this decision must inevitably do. Miceal Martin and Batt O'Keeffe agree and are traitors to Cork.They have betrayed their people for their own power. Batt O'Keeffe has supported screwing the elderly through removing their medical cards and screwing the Cork kids in the schools so why not screw Cork Airport? Judge for yourself what friend of Cork he is.
6. Minister Seamus Brennan gave a solemn commitment to the people of Cork that the cost would NOT be borne by the people of Cork. An Taoiseach, and Minister Noel Dempsey have reneged on this commitment. Batt O'Keeffe says it was a typical double speak political utterance and should be treated as such and not relied on. The translation of this is that all Fianna Fail politicians are liars!
7. The entire board get € 12,000 each a year for doing nothing - a bit like Beverley Flynn - and they will do and say nothing to their political masters for fear of losing their money. Their last Chairman, Joe Gantly, sold the airport down the swanee by agreeing to the € 113 million debt before resigning. Put simply, he betrayed the people of Cork as did Batt O'Keeffe and Micheal Martin.
8. Not one Fianna Fail or Fine Gael politician is prepared to put their jobs on the line to support the airport. They waffle!
9. The new terminal instead of costing the estimated € 70 million is actually of the order of € 234 million and will break the airport and destroy its finances. There is also only one airbridge - which rarely works - for the � million. Some bargain! Some airbridge! Elsewhere there is a picture of an ad the taxpayers paid a huge sum for which says “AIRBRIDGES”. There are none.
10. Instead of having airbridges to get to the aircraft the new terminal is an operational disaster and involves three flights of stairs with 61 steps in total for boarding and disembarking from aircraft. We will get soaked in the rain, hail or snow walking to the aircraft. Even worse, when the elderly arrive at the bottom of the steps, if they need the lift, they have to wait there in the freezing cold for ten or more minutes. In every civilised airport in the world one goes to a lift, pushes a button and goes either up or down as is necessary. Not in Cork! There are, of course, no escalators! Every two bit airport in Europe has air bridges at every gate but not our Cork.
11. I do not know of any other airport in the world with such a stupid design. It breaks health and safety rules and discriminates against the elderly and the infirm and is therefore illegal, not that that bothers anyone there! I am sure the board of Cork Airport are proud of that because nobody does anything to rectify the situation. Not one member of the board has ever said anything in public. Every single one of them is afraid to come out and say what they think and why they behave as they do. One can understand the worker directors as if they say anything in public they get fired but the rest are spineless hypocrites.
12. The last annual accounts of theDublin Airport Authority show it to be totally insolvent. There is no money to pay for a new Dublin terminal much less anything to do with Cork. My current thinking is to apply to the High Court to wind up the lot and that will no doubt concentrate Minister Dempsey's mind and that of the Government, not to mention the Boards.
13. I now put all the Directors on notice that they are Directors of an insolvent company trading recklessly and can be disqualified from being Directors of any Irish Company as well as face penalties from the Court. I repeat, insolvent! Wait until Paul Appelbe finds put! There is no proper accounting whatsoever with regard to the cost of the new terminal or for that matter Cork airport..
14. But strangest of all was a document showing that the Cork Airport Board has budgeted for a loss of € 4.5 million this year, yep, four point five million, even before any of the costs of the new terminal are taken into account or the effect of the current financial crisis. Now add the eight million per annum capital cost of the new terminal to the extra costs of running the terminal and would somebody explain to me, a poor peasant, how this airport is expected to survive? It is totally insolvent by any standards. I will be very interested in seeing what, if any, qualification the auditors put on the accounts. At a rough estimate the current loss scheduled for the new Terminal is about € 20 million per annum. Who is going to pay? The public are being lied to and fooled. And Shannon, of course, is a total basket case. KPMG are not performing an adequate audit and what they are producing is useless and untrue. Their audit is a fraud on the public.
18. THE CORK AIRPORT AUTHORITY PUBLIC LIMITED COMPANY BOARD
1. For an analysis of all the directors involved, their background and how many are failed businessmen and people who have never had to make a bob in their lives. read the rotten biographies following. They are real, true and accurate.
2. Who shall we start with? How about Humphrey St. Jude Murphy whose claim to fame lies in stainless steel, to wit Global Stainless. I need hardly say the training to supply stainless steel is absolutely invaluable. On the other hand he is Miceal Martin's constituency organiser who gets rewarded with these plum jobs so as to be Mickeys eyes and ears. Its called jobs for the Mickey boys with a vengeance. And they do get fantastic travel perks! St. Jude is the patron saint of lost causes.
Dear Humphrey has only been the director of four dissolved - did I hear the word “failed” somewhere? - companies. For example Global Metal Technology Limited never seemed to file any accounts in its ten years of existence.He was also company secretary so he was the responsible officer. Then there was the Dublin Dome Limited which also seemed to forget accounts. Bit like the London Dome maybe? I will not mention H & C Personalised Gifts Limited which never filed any accounts either.
3. Next we come to that eminent authority on airports Veronica Perdisant. She is Chairperson of the Kilkenny Group and cut her teeth in Ovens. What she is doing on the board is hard to imagine. Another know nothing. To be fair at one meeting after listening to 20 minutes of waffle by the Minister when she asked him who was going to pay for the airport she did try and pin him down but as she failed totally it appears to be the reason she has not been heard from since. She has now gone totally native. Never did get an answer to that question, did she? Come on Veronica, surely you at least will come out and tell the true story? Why will you not meet people or tell the public what is going on. No board experience on record.
4. Don Cullinane's travel agency went broke so no doubt he needs the Board job but the fact that he has been involved in a failed travel company should be sufficient to bar him from the board of any semi-state. Its wrong and an insult to the people of Cork.
5. How about Pat Dalton? A well known gas expert, no doubt, with a vast experience of hot air. Now I just wonder if the Debis Air Finance group of which he is a director of a number of their companies could be the same Debis Air Finance that screwed EU Jet and left all the passengers abandoned. Another well known authority on airports, I don't think!
6. Of course we have Alf Smiddy who to be fair to him has an excellent record at Beamish. Don't tell me Beamish have gone too! But what has it to do with airports? Sweet damn all. But for years he has wanted to be on a state body so now he got his opportunity. It's amazing how the egos of these people are so huge that they can be so easily bribed. To be fair, rumour has it that he has fought against Dublin but again stays silent. He too has gone native.
7. As for Dick Lehane, ex EMC2, I have absolutely no idea what he is doing on the board as he has no airport experience either. I know he was extremely competent to run EMC 2 and that he has done wonders for Ballincollig but that still does not qualify him to be on the board of Cork Airport. A company board should only be people experienced in that business.
8. Noel Dempsey recently appointed Ms Annette McNamara who, wait for the list of her vast experience, is Assistant Principal of Scoil Muire Gan Smal, Blarney, County Cork. Of course, she is a Fianna Fail activist and needs this to supplement her income and it is the only reason she got appointed. She knows absolutely nothing about airports and is a total incompetent when it comes to Cork Airport. It is a bloody disgrace and an insult to the people of Cork that stupid Fianna Fail activists are appointed to the Board of Cork Airport. And if Ms. Mc Namara had any integrity in the first place she would not have accepted the appointment.
9. Lastly the new Chairman of Cork Airport Gerry Walsh. I had hoped for some improvement here as Joe Gantly was a total disaster and sold the airport and the people of Cork down the drain and then abandoned ship. Joe Gantly, had an ego is bigger than the rest of them put together and sadly, it looks like Gerry Walsh is no better. He does not answer his mail and does not meet peasants like me. I try and be fair in this publication but if the guy is so arrogant that he feels he does not have to explain himself what else can you do other than presume he is sent in by the Minister to destroy the future of Cork Airport such as selling off the land surreptitiously! Anyhow what exactly does he do? Dublin runs the place so what is he there for other than to supplement his retirement by 12,000 euro per annum at the taxpayers expense like the rest of the board. I call that theft from the taxpayer.
The Minister said appointing him, “I know that he will bring the same levels of skill, energy and enthusiasm that he demonstrated in his previous work to the challenging field of aviation.” I seem to recall his previous work screwing his previous employers - the taxpayer - for considerable sums of money - and getting it - when leaving! No doubt he will sue Cork airport as well!
10. The only reasonable thing about this board is that they have a number of airport workers who would have the airport at heart and will do their best but they simply do not have the experience to run a 400 million euro company, will be outsmarted by the others, and probably go native shortly after starting, as all worker directors do. Anyhow, why a board of over a dozen people?
11. Just in case anyone involved in running the airport might try and tell them anything they have appointed a Manager, Pat Keohane, who while on the face of it has a good industrial track record, has absolutely zero airport experience. He is used to the private sector where nobody tells bosses what to do. I have news for him. As a manager in the public sector he must, I repeat, must, meet people who want to meet him, must, repeat must, answer questions, account for his actions to the public and show transparency in his dealings. He lives in isolated splendour in the old terminal and talks to nobody.
19. CORK AIRPORT CURRENT BOARD - DUBLIN AIRPORT AUTHORITY
We are happy to announce, hopefully thanks in some part to our efforts, to announce the cleaning out of a lot of rubbish from the DAA board with effect from October 1, 2009. It is interesting that people we wanted fired from Gary Mc Cann to many others have actually been fired. Serves them right and good riddance to bad rubbish. Accountability might finally be coming to Ireland and its corporate boards. Anyhow, let's analyse the new board.
1. David Dilger is Chairman of Cork Airport (and Dublin Airport and Shannon Airport). He is the ideal person for running the Dublin Airport Authority which loses its shirt and costs the taxpayer a fortune. His claim to fame is that when Chief Executive of Greencore he managed to shut the business down, threw oodles of people out of work, left a trail of disaster behind him in Mallow, Carlow and Thurles . To make matters worse he was and is a Director of the Bank of Ireland and one of the people whose decision making led to the bankruptcy of Ireland Inc. He is now doing the same to the Dublin Airport Authority. He is a friend of Noel Dempsey and was appointed as part of Irish cronyism. He knows nothing about airports.The Bank of Ireland Board stole peoples life savings and have left many people penniless. In any other country he and his fellow bank robbers would be in jail.
Naturally Minister Dempsey appointed another, useless, crony to the Chairman position so don't hold your breath for any worthwhile benefit to Cork Airport. Dempsey has no interest in appointing anyone competent. All he wants is a compliant hack who will not cause him any problems. He could always appoint me and I would run the best airport system in the world with one of the best staffs who do not get a chance at the moment. I would take no fees.
The last Chairman Gary Mc Gann was Chairman of Cork Airport (and Dublin Airport and Shannon Airport).To make matters worse, this incompetent fool was a Director of Anglo Irish Bank who have brought the country to their knees just as he effectively has done with Dublin Airport. They stole peoples life savings and have left many people penniless. In any other country he and his fellow bank robbers would be in jail. When he resigned in disgrace, our current transport minister Noel Dempsey praised him!
2. Next Oliver Cussen. A civil servant until he joined Aer Rianta and who never had to fight to make a bob in his life. No airport experience of course. Never worked in an airport in his life. I would say that his main claim to fame is that he has been on the Board of Great Southern Hotels which was insolvent, run like a lunatic asylum and lost its shirt. Totally incompetent.
3. Now we come to Declan Collier whose main claim to fame is that he was on the Board of Great Southern Hotels Limited which despite being one of the best hotel business in the country lost its shirt in a spectacular manner and had to be sold cheap because the board - of which he was a member - could not run it. Interestingly he does not mention Great Southern Hotels in his resume but I don't suppose that should be any surprise. Ideal for Dublin Airport. He presides over what is arguably the worst airport in the world in Dublin. He is the Chief Executive and he more than anyone else bears responsibility for the mess that passes for Dublin Airport. And he is in charge of Cork airport as well. We do not need that sort of person involved in Cork.
4. Mary Mc Cabe, Thomas Guilfoyle, Michael Lenane and Barry Nevin who comprise almost half of the board have absolute zero board experience in any company anywhere. Now I must say they are four good, genuine people who do their best but Mary Mc Cabe is a cleaner! How can you have people with their non-existent backgrounds running three of Irelands largest airports? Is it any wonder Dublin Airport is Europes biggest disaster and Terminal 2 is an expensive white elephant? But even worse, and certainly in their favour is that they have more airport experience between them than everyone else put together. To be fair to Barry Nevin he does try in Wicklow in promoting the area but that has nothing to do with Dublin Airport. Its crazy and they have no business on the board.
5. Ah, but now we have the token expertise of none other than Sir Michael Hodgkinson, BART. - that BART really sounds good - savour it on your tongue by rolling it around - with vast experience of the motor and food industries in Europe. Maybe he could sort out the restaurants and maybe clean Dublin Airport up but he is an executive and does not dirty his hands. Wait for it, though! He had responsibility for expansion planning at BAA including Heathrow and Stansted. You may recall his planning for Heathrow was so perfect that the airport collapsed one day last year at one stage and is in a dreadul mess. On the other hand Dublin almost collapses every day so he is really well fitted.
For that matter he could not even be bothered going to 25% of the Board meetings of DAA. Well, I suppose if you do not go you cannot be blamed! What the hell are we doing with him on our board when he does not even go near Cork Airport? More than likely does not even know where it is!
I asked some staff at Cork Airport if they knew him. Not alone did they not know him, but they never even heard of him. Now that is what you call an active Director when he is so upper class he could not be bothered meeting the peasants of Cork whose lives he helps control. He calls it management without consultation. I call it no management.
6. Finally, Peter Barrett whose main claim to fame seems to be RBS Aerospace Ireland Leasing whose experience while deserved would be more akin to an airline than to an airport.His keen analytical mind should be an asset but nevertheless DAA is a financial disaster. so what is he doing about it? He also should know that DAA's pension fund is a disaster and a millstone around the companys neck making it insolvent as it needs about € 270 million so if the company continues to trade insolvently then he could be personally liable. It is also worth noting that RBS went spectacularly broke last year and had to be bailed out to the tune of € 47 billion by the U.K. Government. I am not sure that being a director of anything to do with the RBS group is any recommendation.
These, ladies and gentlemen are the people running some of Irelands most valuable assets into the ground. It should dispel, once and for all, any idea that you might have that our current is run by competent people. These people are not intelligent, these people are not competent to run a pissup in a brewery, these people are purely there because of their political connections. They have no honour, they have no integrity, because, if they had they would resign.
20. THE SHANNON AIRPORT BOARD - ANOTHER CHAIRMAN GONE.
1. Another gangster has gone from the DAA Operations, this time Pat Shanahan, head of the do nothing Shannon Airport Authority, who, allegedly spent millions on junkets. Good riddance to him. He has presided overe the demise of Shannon to the extent that when Ryanair pull out soon it will a five flight a day airport once again.
2. His airport authority have stated “they would not negotiate with Ryanair for a new deal” and would rather see the airport empty than have to deal with Michael O'Leary. Well, they will get their wish shortly but that is kind of tough on the people dependent on Shannon for their job because their Masters are so high and mighty they refuse to negotiate for business, rather than seeing what they can do to keep the business they have. Declan Collier is too busy collecting his extra € 136,000 from AIB to be bothered with such mundane matters as Shannon going under. He can spend days on AIB when he should be earning his € 638,000 trying to save Shannon,. But he “refuses to negotiate!” And Shannon will pay dearly for his arrogance. And what does Willie O'Dea do? Nothing. All talk!
3. He and his gang of thieves, otherwise known as the Shannon Airport Board are reported to have spent € 1.7 million of the taxpayers money on junkets.No wonder he went before the story got out. His history, by the way, was running a manufacturing company at Shannon which went broke.
4. So who is responsible for all this mess? Lets look at the Directors of the Shannon Airport Board who while a notch above the Cork board in intelligence, equally have no airport experience. Even worse there are thirteen of them, also stealing money from the taxpayer and taking money to do nothing on a powerless board. And in the meantime the airport goes down the drain.For example,
Mary Considine, Company secretary has no board experience.Directors Raymond Gray or Audrey Costelloe have none either.
5. Rose Hynes is the senior independent director of Total Produce, director of Bank of Ireland Mortgage Bank and director of Shannon Airport Authority, among others. She is a former director of Aer Lingus and GPA. Bank of Ireland, GPA, and Aer Lingus all went spectacularly broke. Enough said! Absolutely ideal! She is director of some thirty companies. Now lets see, at one day per company per month I wonder when she gets time to do anything. Obvious answer is she does nothing. No airport experience.
6. Next former GPA executive Patrick Blaney is the former Chief Executive of GPA Group plc, the Irish based aircraft financing business founded by Dr. Tony Ryan (Ryanair) and was responsible for leading that business through one of the largest and most complex restructuring transactions, from near bankruptcy in 1992 to its successful sale for € 1billion to Debis AirFinance NV, a unit of Daimler Chrysler. Whatever about his airport experience, at least he has good business experience if he ever gets time to be involved in Shannon.
7. Michael B. Lynch, owner of the Lynch Hotels group which went spectacularly broke owing € 23 million and creditors got 10%. If he cannot run his own hotel company, how could be possibly be any assistance to the Shannon board, unless he has plans to see that Shannon Airport creditors get 10% also? He has absolutely no business there and should not have to even wait to be fired. A failed businessman who knows nothing about airports. He must be a right buddy of Noel Dempsey and his presence is a scandal.
8. Could Padraig Burke from Galway possibly be the director of 28 companies which went out of business, not to mention the fact that some sixteen of them never even bothered to file any annual returns because they were afraid to have their companies audited. There are no accounts for Shannon airport either so he should be quite at home. Another criminal!
9. Joe Buckely is the only one of the lot of them with airport experience and was actually Airport Terminal Manager and Airport Ground Services Officer. But I doubt if he has any influence on his fellow board members and he was part of the Ryanair mess.
10. Reginald Freake and Olivia Loughnane do God knows what but have no relevant board experience.Linda Keane manages real estate on a fee basis based in Mungret College and John Mc Carthys sole claim to fame seems to be as Director of Domestic Maintenance Equipment Hire Limited. They are no longer in business!Pat Shanahan was also senior exective in Tellabs who don’t seem around any longer either.
11. So this motley collection are those responsible for Shannon airport. Anybody ever hear them utter anything on any subject relevant to the airport? Now Ryaair are threathening to abandon Shannon and they are so high and mighty they cannot even bring themselves to talk to Ryanair. Its called ignorance, arrogance and incompetence all in one. But they get their money anyhow! God help Shannon with this lot. And you don't see them publish accounts or details of their expenses either just in case somebody might try and connect the figures with the missing € 1.7 million.
21. CORK AIRPORT BOARD TRYING TO SELL AIRPORT LAND TO FIANNA FAIL DEVELOPERS In February we reported that apparently members of the Board of Cork Airport have been in secret discussions with County Council officials concerning planning so that they can sell off the valuable airport land for a pittance to Fianna Fail developers. This land, if sold, would end any chance of extending the second runway - in fact, cause its closure - which is vitally necessary and destroys any chance of expansion in the future.
I challenged the Board of Cork Airport to detail to the public what their plans are, what discussions they have had with the County Council and with developers. The Board are under the illusion that they are accountable to nobody, can do what they like and have no duty to keep the public informed. They are wrong. They are spending our money and we want to know where it is going. So far, a deafening silence. And what about the secret compulsory purchase orders whereby they are going to purchase land at a minimum price for their developer friends? .It's a bloody disgrace what is going on behind the publics back.
22. AER ARANN.
Some six months ago I analysed Aer Arann who are vital to the Cork Airport but are being run into the ground. I hoped that somebody in the company reading this might take some action. Their financial situation has since deteriorated further and their operations no way resemble a well run airline. Again the problem is ignorant management.
1. Aer Arann are headed for bankruptcy and will have one hell of a job surviving this winter. When I was young, I looked at guys like the management of Aer Arann and said what geniuses they were and that they must know something I did not know, but now with long experience behind me I simply shake my head and say the bloody fools!
2. Operations are a shambles. No airline can survive posting the delays that they post, day after day. Ryanair, for all of its failings, manages to keep the best on time record in Europe. It is indeed amazing, but is due to ruthless management attention. That management attention is missing at Aer Arann and the managers do not manage but instead the airline just happens. There is not sufficient management attention being paid to delays, their cause and their prevention. The Aer Arann management do not believe in hands on management. They are executives and they do not dirty their hands. They outsource everything even the management and it cannot and will not work.
3. The management have little experience of hands on running an airline. They lack the necessary experience to make Aer Arann operationally sound. They certainly have no idea how a ground operation should be conducted properly. Lately they are cancelling flights on key routes because they did not have enough passengers. You can't do that!
4. To take the Cork to Belfast route for example, this is primarily a business route with many people going both ways in a day. Aer Arann started in August cancelling flights on little or no notice, thereby preventing day returns, undermining confidence in the route and basically shooting themselves in the foot. You cannot where you have two flights a day just knock one off and the route survive. It is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.
5. Aer Arann have tremendous advantages such as short checkin, baggage allowance etc. but do nothing to promote it properly. They allow the airports to tell people come 2 hours before departure when all is needed is 15 minutes.They totally fail to stand up to ridiculous security rules imposed on them by both the airports and the Department of Transport. Padraig and Fergal are so afraid of losing their life support PSO money that they would not murmur an objection.
6. The entire Aer Arann checkin system including baggage handling is crazy, uneconomic and needs radical overhaul. Nobody has ever looked at what they are trying to achieve by checkin and whether there is a better way of doing it - and there is! A totally new approach is needed. The web checkin is a joke and using Servisair the way they do in Cork is plain money-wasting stupid.
7. Whoever picks their routes and plans their schedules needs their head examined. It should be absolutely clear-cut that the two flights per week from Galway to Cork, never mind any service, was a no brainer and totally uneconomic yet they persisted - and lost their shirt. Now they have come up with one better, Galway to Waterford twice a day on two days a week. There is no way that this service can make money and it only adds to their losses. Dublin to Blackpool never made money for anyone and certainly does not for Aer Arann. Why they fly to Prestwick rather than Glasgow is a mystery and again shows ignorance of reality.
8. For that matter their proposed schedule using ATR aircraft is totally uneconomic. Nobody, but nobody, makes money with ATR aircraft but Aer Arann intend re-inventing the wheel. Only two airplanes in the jet category make money which are the 737 and 320 families. The Aer Arann current route schedule is a recipe for disaster. The commercial director was the finance director so they must know the truth of what I am saying! They need to take drastic action right now and cut out everything that is unprofitable. There may not be very much left, but so be it. Their operation is engineering led, not market led. They are purely surviving on the PSO grant and that will not last.
9. The fact that the published block times are too short indicates a scheduling department totally out of touch with reality. For example Cork to Edinburgh is blocked at 1hr. 35 when 1 hr. 45m would be more realistic.
10. Next, equally as predicted, the losses on the Cork to Dublin route have been astronomical so what do they do? They cut all the profitable flights and only operate at 1135 and 1620 northbound and 1015 and 1500 southbound. Nobody in their right mind would think that timetable could be profitable and it will not be either. It is worth noting that these are the only times of the day Ryanair do NOT operate so that says something! Why did they lose their shirt? Because their time keeping was absolutely appalling, thats why. Nobody could rely on them and Ryanair walked away with the passengers.
11. Aer Arann announced its debut at London City on a route from the Isle of Man and started 19 January, 2009. They operate three times daily flights with ATR72-500 aircraft. What they neglect to mention is that a very well established, well run, airline, Flybe, operates three times a day to Gatwick and they have not a chance against them. In any event, nobody wants to go to London City as it connects with nowhere. On their own admission “Although VLM has continued to operate its daily service originating from London, the monthly average has recently dropped to less than 1,000 passengers”. Now it does not take Sherlock Holmes to figure that if there are already 26 flights per week or 104 per month that there is simply no market whatsoever for Aer Arann adding another fifteen flights per week or 60 per month. Put simply, this route may be the last straw that puts Aer Arann out of business. Even in its heyday the route never went over 5,500 passengers per month.
12. But the joke of the century is that they are “looking at setting up a base in the Isle of Man”. They need this like they need a hole in the head! They would do far better to run their current operation properly. Nobody, but nobody can make money out of the Isle of Man, least of all, Aer Arann with toy airplanes.
13. To show how spin has become everything in life and everyone lies through their teeth I quote:
“Aer Arann and Aer Lingus ink new interline deal - Fly Aer Arann from Cork and connect at Dublin with Aer Lingus to the USA through a single booking via aerlingus.com. Aer Arann and Aer Lingus have signed an Interline Agreement that allows customers to directly connect to Aer Lingus transatlantic services from Cork Airport. From today, bookings can be made on aerlingus.com directly both to and from Cork to all seven Aer Lingus USA destinations in one single booking transaction. Customers will be able to check-in at Cork Airport, through check luggage directly to their final destination in the USA, and transfer to their flight at Dublin Airport. The new arrangement is also available for customers travelling from the USA connecting to Cork”.
The Aer Lingus website has flaw after flaw and, for example, on November 12, 2009, Cork to Chicago is shown as full when the reality is that both legs are empty. Those in charge know nothing about their own websites so nothing is done to correct the problems but because of this, the mistakes are repeated, time and time again. The Aer Arann website has no facility at all to book these so called “partnership”” services which shows how little Aer Lingus trust them.
14. Aer Arann advertise Hertz at € 18 per day. I did one check for April 4 and came up with the cheapest at € 63.50 per day. Why cannot they tell the truth? People would use them then but they are losing the most important commodity of all – trust. For their information, another company is € 42. They can neither justify their false advertising but much less justifycharging drastically more than the competition. Why not do a deal with the competition instead? The other car hire company even at their full rate would be almost half Hertz. But why does Aer Arann fashion a stick to beat themselves with? At the end of the day false, fraudulent, advertising never works. The public only gets caught once!
15. Next, Aer Arann advertises hotels from only “€ 29” per night on the website. They must be joking! The reality is and I quote from further into their own website when you go to book : Cork € 146, Dublin € 109, Waterford € 148, Killarney € 243. Who is kidding who? Again I would not mind but most hotels are offered to the punter directly for half those prices so either they are making an exorbitant profit or else are being screwed by the hotel, the latter being more likely. But again why make a stick to beat themselves with? Can nobody in Aer Arann see that this is no way to do business? What is even more
looney is that the hotel itself only wants € 126 directly and Aer Arann wants € 146 for their special discount! Again it is a fraud on the punter. It cannot and will not work.The results alone should tell them that this advertising does not work.
16. Nowhere in their website does it indicate who runs what in the company, which may well be sensible as nobody can blame anyone then, but is not the way to do things. Why are they afraid to put up their corporate structure and who runs what? It does appear from a press release that none of the executives, much less the board, of course, has any hands on experience in running an airline and this needs to be remedied drastically fast.
17. Internal documents of Aer Arann show that it lost € 1,225,000 last year. Even worse confidential predictions drawn up for 2009 show the loss rising to almost € 2,500,000 and about € 2,000,000 for 2010. Aer Arann do not publish accounts and have left the Department of Transport in a quandary as they refuse to provide them with figures even though the taxpayer is footing the bill. These losses are not sustainable. If the PSO goes, so does Aer Arann.
18. Once you accept that the airline is losing money, in order to ascertain how long the airline will last is very simple. All you do is divide the amount of cash plus available credit by the loss per month and you very quickly discover how many months you are going to remain in business. Very, very, simple! My research leads me to the conclusion that no accurate finance figures are available to the management of Aer Arann due to inaccurate and incompetent accounting systems and management fight on with a wing and a prayer. It is no way to run any airline.
19. The fact that they receive public money and yet publish no accounts of any kind is a fraud on the taxpayer. If a company receives public money then it should publish its accounts. In this case, I believe, the taxpayer's money is being wasted. It would be very interesting to know what their bankers are being told!
The Minister for Transport is worse to allow the situation to continue and should demand detailed accounts so that his department can assess the situation. Aer Arann are a vital part of the Irish economy and the fact they want to commit suicide is not a good reason to allow them to do so.
20. Aer Arann boast a 46.2% load factor which is totally lossmaking by any standards whereas Ryanair achieve 80.8%. In plain English, Aer Arann have such a lousy commercial department they simply fail to sell seats. Fire somebody! Every Ryanair passenger should be a potential passenger for Aer Arann but the ineptness of the Aer Arann management makes sure the passengers flock to Ryanair and they do. Aer Arann punctuality record is appalling and this is the main reason.
21. The cure is to fire the Operations Manager and fire the Commercial Manager and keep replacing them until things go right and if that does not work then fire Padraig O'Ceidigh. It is simply not good enough for Padraig O'Ceidigh to take taxpayers money and have no accounting for it. A lot of small suppliers are going to come badly unstuck when Aer Arann go bankrupt and that is neither right nor fair. Minister Dempsey also has a duty to ensure they are financially sound.
22. Aer Arann maintenance is substandard and leads to an unacceptably high tech rate on the aircraft. Somebody needs to get their head of maintenance, give him targets for performance and tell him either he produces or he is fired. And if the next guy cannot perform then fire him to and so on until somebody provides aircraft that can run the schedule. The number of total engine closedowns is too high. In short, in my view, their maintenance is not up to a safe standard because the maintenance staff is failing to deliver. Now is the time to take severe action, not after the inevitable accident. On August 15, 2008 for example they achieved a record 100% of every flight late out of Cork. This takes some achieving!
23. The management have come up with the novel solution of spending € 180 million on new aircraft which they need like they need a hole in their heads. This is insane for an airline like Aer Arann. They would be better giving Michael O'Leary ten million per year to run the place – which he would – and then they might have a chance. Nobody but nobody with Aer Aranns route structure can make money with ATR 72 aircraft, especially in Ireland and much less the ATR 42 which is even more uneconomic. A guaranteed recipe for bankruptcy is what they have done in buying new aircraft and one can only surmise it was to satisfy the ego of the Chief Executive. The only hope at all for Aer Arann to make money is with written down aircraft.
24. Paul Schutz has been appointed CEO now and to be fair to him he does have an impressive background. He worked for Virgin Express as Director of Finance and Administration. Who are they? They went broke! He also worked for British West Indies Airlines (BWIA) initially as Chief Financial Officer and later becoming Joint General Manager. Who are they? They also went broke! He then went to Eirjet as Managing Director, and what happened? Don't hold your breath! They went broke too. He is obviously the ideal person for Aer Arann with such an impeccable record.
25. Reacting to the appointment of Paul Schutz as his successor Garry Cullen commended the Board for their vision in appointing a “chief executive with talent and ambition coupled with an obvious commitment to Aer Arann and a strong desire to lead its development as a leading European regional carrier”. Somebody needs their head examined to believe that tosh. It is reliably not understood that this management team are about to be appointed to run Anglo Irish Bank!
26. Now for the latest nonsense. I quote: Etihad Airways is extending its services in Ireland with the announcement of a new codeshare agreement with Aer Arann which will provide travellers from Cork and Galway with greater access to 48 destinations around the world through its Abu Dhabi hub.
Beatrice Cosgrave, Etihad Airways' country manager Ireland, said: ”We are thrilled to announce this new code share agreement with Aer Arann”. James Hogan, Etihad Airways' chief executive, said: “Etihad Airways has developed a strong affinity with Ireland, with Dublin quickly establishing itself as one of our most popular routes, enjoying average seat factors during 2008 of more than 80%. There is great demand amongst our customers to travel beyond the Irish capital, which this new codeshare agreement now allows.”
Welcoming the code share agreement Aer Arann Chief Executive Paul Schutz praised Etihad Airways for their recognition of the importance of regional connections to their global network. “Etihad passengers from the regions will now be able to check-in with Aer Arann, get all their boarding cards and send their bags all the way through to their final destination” said Paul Schutz, “ensuring that it is just as easy to travel from the South or West of Ireland to Abu Dhabi, Bangkok or Sydney as it is from Dublin or London” , the Aer Arann CEO concluded.
Flight EY42 departs Dublin on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8.50am and arrives in Abu Dhabi at 8.15pm the same day. Brilliant! The first Aer Arann flight from Cork to Dublin gets there at 1230. Etihad left at 8.50 a.m.! Thats what you call tight connections! Does Beatrice, Paul, and James really believe what they are saying which is simply a load of crap? That agreement is useless. Oh, and the other flight gets back to Dublin at 6.25 p.m. whereas the last Aer Arann left at 3 p.m.!
27. In short Aer Arann is an accident waiting for a place to happen. It needs a major overhaul of management with new people experienced in running an airline. The commercial department is a total disaster, whoever picks routes needs their head examined and the operations department is failing to provide fully serviceable aircraft on time to maintain punctuality, which, allied with operational stupidity guarantees that Aer Arann is in serious financial trouble. Aer Arann is vital to Ireland and cannot be allowed to fail. But the bottom line is that it is taxpayers money which is being shovelled at them, there is no accountability whatosever and nobody wants any, which is totally wrong. Anybody out there care?
28. Aer Arann needs to ruthlessly cut everything which is losing money right now and deal with all the problems listed above asap, and, before they go broke. And go broke they must, if they carry on the way they are. Time is running out!
23. BAGGAGE HALL ABSOLUTELY FILTHY AND A HEALTH HAZARD .
The baggage hall, as the photos on the front of this newsletter show, is absolutely filthy, a disgrace to the people of Cork and a tribute to the management who would not know dirt even if they saw it. I reported it in September as not having been done for two months. Three months later it still has not been cleaned, the mice are really enjoying themselves and the place is a kip. It's no wonder they wanted to hide it by not letting me into see it.
Now Pat Keohane and Gerry Walsh still does not seem to have got the message. I am not asking him to clean the place up. I am telling him to or else! If it is not done when I inspect it next week, I will post pictures of the dirt and filth for everyone to see on every pillar in the departures hall and he won't like the resultant publicity. I will then turn up with some helpers to clean the place ouselves as Cork people are ashamed of it and he will be forced into using force against us to stop us cleaning the place and he won't like that publicity either. But, why, why, why does he want such a filthy airport? Could it be that to spite me he would rather have the place filthy? So, Pat and Gerry you get that place clean and fast!
I should add that, in my view, the bagage hall is contrary to health and safety legislation and that by using force to prevent me inspecting it and photographing it, he is committing a further offence of attempting to pervert the course of justice. But why can't he just clean the bloody place up? We are not dirty people in Cork!
24. AER LINGUS
1. Aer Lingus is headed for meltdown. Why? Because neither the management nor the board seem able to identify
its problems – which are blatantly obvious to the most stupid outsider – and even more unable or unwilling to do
anything about them. The current proposed rescue plan is stupid, thought up by the inept and incompetent and has
not a cats chance in hell of working.
2. They have come up – for the umpteenth time – with a new rescue plan. It cannot and will not work because the fundamental problem of this airline is not the staff but the management and the way the company is run. There is nothing wrong with the staff – practically all of which would do anything to have the airline survive – but the fundamental problem is that the management all have a failed history in business and the board, are arguably the most ignorant board in the world in terms of running an airline, never mind a profitable one!. Sean Coyle was the only one of the whole lot who knew anything about the business and now he is gone.
3. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and the current lot have managed to have the share price dive to 60c from € 2.80 on 23 October 2006. They have managed to burn up € 600 million in cash. That says it all.
4. When does the airline go broke? November 2010. They say that if you want to make a small fortune in the airline business then you should start with a large fortune. Aer Lingus had one billion in cash a few years ago. They now have less than € 400 million and are burning it up at € 30 million per month. Therefore it goes broke in thirteen months i.e. November 2010.
5. They have a board of political incompetents, an Anglo Irish crooked bank director on the board and a new chief executive whose last claim to fame was that he was in charge of Sabena when it went bankrupt. To be fair to him, I think he understands the problems but I doubt if he will get anywhere in solving them as he is no match for the devious Irish. Dermot Mannion finally realised that he was a total disaster and had the good sense to get out while the going was good but he has almost destroyed the airline during his watch. The Minister stood idly by watching his shareholding value disappear into the ground.The Ministers inaction cost the Irish taxpayer € 600 million to date. The Government raised € 600 million by screwing the poor and sick in the last budget and then blew this for nothing!
6. The tragedy is that Aer Lingus could make money - and good money - if run correctly. So lets look at some of the current problems contributing to their inevitable demise.
7. First when the government allowed the original Team Aer Lingus to go bankrupt and put 1200 people out of work it cost the state € 24 million per annum when as the major shareholder all the Minister had to do was tell Aer Lingus to keep their maintenance in Ireland. Noel Dempsey deliberately put 1200 people out of work at Dublin airport and he thinks he is Irish! Aer Lingus needs to get its maintenance back in house to cut costs.
8. The Mannion decision to open the long haul route to Dubai was a total disaster. He bought airplanes for routes which everyone in the business – except Mannion himself, obviously– knew would be a total disaster. Now there is nowhere to put these airplanes and to cap it all, Mueller plans to operate from Madrid to New York for another bankrupt airline which is a bit like two drunks propping each other up. There is no way Madrid to New York makes sense.
9. Iberia is the competition here. They have superb airplanes equipped with decent seats and fantastic beds. Aer Lingus offer a vastly inferior seat and service. Iberia marketing is superb. Nobody seems to have told Aer Lingus that the secret of success of Iberia is they are about half the price of Aer Lingus, Iberia business class being € 2,000 whereas Aer Lingus are € 3,200. Aer Lingus will again lose their shirt and it should be blatantly obvious to even the most stupid board member!
10. Aer Lingus want to bring in foreign crews who have none of the friendliness of Aer Lingus crews and disaster looms. OK, so I am racist but I do not think anyone could reasonably disagree with the proposition that Aer Lingus cabin staff are among the best in the world and to replace them by underpaid foreigners is a recipe for disaster. The Irish do not want bloody foreigners as crew. People travel Aer Lingus to be with an Irish crew as what gives Aer Lingus its unique reputation is the friendly Irish service.
11. The entire system of ground handling is lunatic, costly and stupid. Their current system comes from the dawn of the aeroplane and the productivity in terms of cost versus result is zilch. The real reason is that nobody in management or the board have a clue about the correct way to do ground handling
12. The web checkin is a joke. There is no logic to a thirty hour checkin. Issue the boarding pass when the booking is made, as Easyjet do, and that cuts the entire operation on the way out. And even worse for most trips there is no way you can checkin for the return trip before you go. Whoever designed the current webcheckin and whoever is in charge of it now should be fired. Easyjet, and Ryanair to a lesser degree have it right. Just why can't Aer Lingus copy them?
13. Aer Lingus should rejoin oneworld at once. For an airline like Aer Lingus, connecting passengers are vital. The current management make no attempt to seek and carry these passengers and in fact discourage them. This is not the way to run Aer Lingus. The future is not all in point to point only and connecting passengers can give an airline a financial edge.
14. Yield management is very poor. The marketing and commercial department is another disaster and I do not believe the management here have a clue. Ryanair 82% load factor. Aer Lingus 70%. It says it all.There is no reason whatsoever why Aer Lingus cannot match Ryanair load factors, not to mention their on time performance. Ryanairs success in these areas is simly due to good management.
15. They opened new hubs at Belfast and Gatwick. The IT department failed to update the software with the result that you cannot generally book through the hub. I was informed they do not want connecting passengers – even if they are their own – and this policy is also mad. What is the point of having a hub like Gatwick if you don't even want your own passengers to go through it? I called and asked for somebody who knew something about the subject to call me so I could tell them where the problems were in the software faults in the reservations system and nobody wanted to know. The management are simply not interested in learning where their problems are.
16. It is very difficult to decide if the Belfast and Gatwick operations should be scrapped. One thing is certain. They are currently losing money. The failure to market correctly, use the hubs correctly and to interline correctly contribute to this disaster. But even worse they are losing their shirts on the European routes from Belfast, yet seem not to realise it because to admit defeat could mean the end of their jobs, and rightly so. Aer Lingus management and reality have never met each other.
17. I sampled the Gatwick to Malaga service last week and there were 31passengers on board. Revenue approximately € 1,400. Cost € 7,500. No further comment. There was no breakfast despite it being advertised because quote “The Gatwick manager has been unable to source breakfast” . Surely the very least that could have been organised was the breakfast on the aircreaft. It is not rocket science. Fire him. And again I insist without Irish crews they are doomed.
18. Another major financial disaster was the removal of premier class on European routes particularly London. It needs to be reinstated forthwith and would up the yield. In their race to the bottom the yield per passenger has got there before them. There used to be fifteen rows of Premier Class on Cork to London at € 200 per seat each way.!
19. Say what you like about Michael O'Leary, and nobody would disagree with the thesis that his service is appalling, but the brutal fact remains that he runs one of the slickest operations in the world, with the best on time record, the least lost bags and makes loads of money. He must do something right. Aer Lingus on the other hand have a poor on time record, fail to sell as many seats per aircraft as Michael and lose millions. Michael can turn around a fleet of 180 aircraft, day in day out, morning, noon and night in twenty five minutes per stop and Aer Lingus cannot even do it in 55. Something is wrong somewhere. All Aer Lingus have to do is to mix Michaels operational methods with their friendly staff and service and they would be on a winner.
20. The Aer Lingus Board and management have treated their staff like dirt. Michael Grealy, head of HR is a disaster and does not even know what human relations are. The firing of cabin staff at Cork airport - many with over twenty years service - shows a callousness that means he has to go. How any executive, in his right mind, could even think of firing a long serving, loyal staff, who had brought the airline its current reputation, beggars belief. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys! Even worse, they got rid of 30 cabin crew at Cork, some of whom now have ground jobs. They are spending a fortune to bring in from Shannon and Dublin extra cabin crew when they have perfectly qualified crew at Cork airport. It illustrates to perfection the lack of intelligence at management level.
21. You know that when you walk up to the checkin at Cork you are guaranteed a friendly reception and if you have problems they will deal with them. Equally Aer Lingus will never leave you behind when things go wrong. Do we really want a bunch of petty dictators behind the desk, like the Ryanair monkeys, trying to think up fifty different reasons as to how they can screw you out of vast sums of money before they let you on board? I don't think so
22. The policy of nine 330 aircraft is an unstoppable drain on the company. Aer Lingus only needs five and should park the other two or sell them . One could certainly do Dublin to London. As for the 320/321 fleet, go and fill them. The load factor drops month after month and they blames everyone except themselves. They obviously have not a clue. Michael O'Leary is expanding, Aer Lingus are cutting back. This can only lead to an even bigger disaster, is the wrong policy and should be reversed immediately. Go out and fill the seats and make money.
23. Many days Ryanair were € 4.99 to London from Cork for all flights yet Aer Lingus is SIXTEEN times as much and they wonders why his load factor is dropping. And this happens day after day. Aer Lingus yield management policy is a total failure and their load factor proves it. Aer Lingus charge up to € 250 oneway to Poland. Wizzair charge € 100. Just copy Wizzair, Easyjet and Ryanair marketing!
24. Finally, you talk of shooting yourself in the foot. Aer Lingus just introduced a new gift voucher scheme which is a great idea except for one small problem. Instead of being glad to find people to give them money in advance, they charge you 20% fee for a € 25 euro voucher. You actually pay them 20% to keep your money, for say a month or a year. I do not know if they will find that many suckers around but in my book the guy who thought that fee up is stark raving mad. A great idea destroyed by stupid implementation. You can’t charge 20% for gift vouchers and expect people to buy them. Charge nothing and you get the use of their money which is quite a bonus.
25. Unless Aer Lingus receives major management changes, and its management decides to run the airline properly they are doomed. This means forgetting Madrid, leaving Belfast, restoring Los Angeles, putting premier service back on short haul routes, putting proper seats into the A330 fleet together with decent food and service and finally getting their marketing correct, which is the most important of all. It just goes to show that the foreigner never conquered us. We always did it ourselves to perfection! Cork Airport, Aer Arann and Aer Lingus are proof, if any is needed! Even worse, nobody cares and nobody does anything. Lets look at the qualifications of those in charge.
25. THE BOARD OF AER LINGUS
26. The new Chairman, Colum Barrington was Chief Operating Officer of GPA Group. They went spectacularly broke. How anybody in their right mind could possibly appoint this guy who was the chief operating officer of a bankrupt company as the Chairman of Aer Lingus beggars belief. Unless of course, they want a repeat performance!
27. There is also the little point that Colum Barrington borrowed money against the shares in GPA which makes him totally unfit for Aer Lingus. He should explain to the public how be bet on the shares of GPA. It was another Anglo-Irish Bank situation. He is another political, useless appointment as a lap poodle for Noel Dempsey. Lets look at the rest of the Board and Management.
28. I must be going totally looney. Colm Barrington was on the radio and actually said that Aer Lingus was going to have increased losses but would at the same time have positive cash flow. The man must be mad and in total denial. You cannot increase your losses and improve your cash flow at the same time.
Some of the GPA top management (today read Aer Lingus) adopted a siege mentality and thought the world was against them. Lack of media enthusiasm was often interpreted as downright aggression. GPA (today read Aer Lingus) had clipped the trees and bankers began to take a closer look at its financial underbelly.
Within a year, Guinness Peat Aviation was in serious trouble and experiencing difficulties meeting repayments. The staggering costs of the failed flotation (today read defending Ryanair takeover bid) ate into resources. GE Capital (today read Ryanair) was waiting in the wings and picked up the pieces.
The restructured GPA was a pale imitation of the dynamic business Dr Ryan had formed in the 1980s. Over one-third of the staff, including Tony Ryan, were soon off the payroll. Sir John Harvey Jones, Nigel Lawson, Garrett FitzGerald and Peter Sutherland. The senior executive team became household names, with people like James King, Colm Barrington, Patrick Blayney and John Tierney believed to have a Midas touch and believed the company could do no wrong and that they were running it superbly. All I can say is here we go again. Does it not sound familiar? Colum Barrington and his entire board at Aer Lingus are in total denial and because of this refuse to take action on the grounds that no action is needed as they are doing such a superb job. The bottom line is they are losing thirty million plus a month and the end of this tragedy will be thousands of people who have worked their butts off to save the company being thrown on the job scrapheap. They have no chance of getting other employment.
29. CEO Christoph Mueller. Mr. Christoph Mueller joined Aer Lingus in September, 2009. Mr. Mueller (47) was most recently the Aviation Director at TUI Travel plc, a leading international leisure travel group operating a pan-European airline with over 160 aircraft.
30. Whether or not he is competent enough to be chief executive, to me, is an open question, but I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. However what has to worry me is that he has no scheduled airlines experience other than Sabena, much less any in the low fares sector. His period at the helm of Sabena as Chief Executive was a total disaster with them going spectacularly broke which does not exactly inspire one with confidence. At this stage all one can do is wish him well. I do believe that he understands the problems but I doubt if he has the bottle to deal with them. If he does, he loses his job and if he does not Aer Lingus goes broke.
31. Sean Coyle, Chief Financial Officer. Sean Coyle is a chartered accountant. He held a number of senior positions at Ryanair including Head of Investor Relations, Commercial Director, Director of Scheduled Revenue, where he was centrally involved in yield and capacity management, schedule planning, network strategy and airport contract negotiations. Sean was the only one with the required experience but unfortunately he has just resigned. It is said he had differences with Mueller and much as I support Sean Coyle I do think Mueller is right in what he wants to do.
32. David Begg was appointed to the Board on 29 January 2008. Mr. Begg became General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in 2001. For five years prior to that he was Chief Executive of Concern Worldwide. He is also a Director of the Central Bank (since 1995) whose overseeing of the Irish economy has led to the current mess. He is one of those responsible for the mess the country currently finds itself in. Nobody from the banking disaster should be a director of any public company.
33. What the hell he is doing on the board beggars imagination other than the fact he needs over € 250,000 per annum in income and likes flying first class around the world free. With all his appointments there is no way he can devote the necessary time to sorting out the Aer Lingus mess. I have failed to discover anywhere what education – if any – he has had that would qualify him to be on the Board of Aer Lingus. Perhaps he will enlighten me and I will publish it in the next issue. It is my view that he is totally unfit, totally unqualified and a disaster on the board of Aer Lingus. He has a total conflict of interest.
34. Thomas Corcoran was appointed to the Board on 4 May 2007. Mr.. Corcoran has extensive and indepth experience in the aviation industry worldwide. He is currently a Senior Advisor to The Carlyle Group and President of Corcoran Enterprises LLC, a management consultancy firm. He has held senior executive management positions at General Electric and Lockheed Martin. He is also a Director of Aircraft Management Technologies, a privately held Irish company. He is a graduate of Stevens Institute of Technology where he is a Trustee and holds an honorary PhD. He obviously did not have the intelligence to earn one on his capabilities like the rest of us!
35. However, Mr. Corcoran has no scheduled airline experience, the Carlyle Group is steeped in corruption and he has no place on the Board of Aer Lingus. Aer Lingus simply cannot have tainted people on its board. In any event he does not even live in Ireland so he is no use. I offer him space to enlighten us what benefit he brings or has brought to Aer Lingus other than helping it go down the drain as he has done extremely successfully indeed. But what has he done to try and stop it?
36 Laurence Crowley has been appointed non-executive director to the board of Aer Lingus Group. He is chairman of Gaisce - The President's Award, the Gate Theatre, Middletown Centre for Autism, Ecocem and Realex Payments. He is also a member of the board of the Economic and Social Research Institute, the Advisory Board of the US-Ireland Alliance and a number of other companies. He previously served as governor of Bank of Ireland, where he completed his term in 2005, and as executive chairman of the Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School at University College Dublin (UCD). He is a former director of Elan Corporation
37 Mr. Crowley is chairman of Realex Payments, which handles Aer Lingus's payment processing. He knows nothing about running an airline and is totally tainted by being an ex-Director of the Bank of Ireland which led to the country's downfall. He was in charge when the bank got in trouble and approved the policies that led to its downfall just as is happening now with Aer Lingus. A total disaster and utterly useless and tainted by a conflict of interest.
38. Ivor Fitzpatrick was appointed to the Board on 5 June 2002. He is a solicitor and the founding partner of Ivor Fitzpatrick & Co. Solicitors. Mr.. Fitzpatrick practises and has extensive experience in the legal profession and is also involved in various commercial and business activities. Knows even less about the airline business and has no place on the board. One of Charlies buddies and never cried stop when Charlie was robbing the country blind. He represented Charlie Haughey during the tribunal investigations into his finances. Truth about Charlie was never his objective.
39. You remember that Aer Lingus chief executive Dermot Mannion had to bow to growing shareholder pressure and agree to cancel a lucrative severance package he had agreed with the airline which meant he would have earned a pay-off of up to € 2.8 million in the event of “constructive dismissal” by any new owner of the airline. A similar package was negotiated for Sean Coyle for € 1.2 million. Who approved the package? The airlines remuneration committee. Who was Chairman of the Committee? None other than the bould Ivor Fitzpatrick! He showed appalling judgement and in my book he was simply looking after his friends.
40 Here is the best joke and I quote from the annual report for 2008: “The Board considers that between them the Directors bring a range of skills, knowledge and experience necessary to lead the group” . What tripe. Of course they would say that! And Irish Congress of Trade Unions general secretary and Aer Lingus board member David Begg said yesterday that he felt “personally quite betrayed” when he heard of the pay-off terms for Mr. Mannion. What was he doing when his board approved it? Mr. Begg said that, despite being a member of the board, he had not sanctioned the package. He really knew and was partly responsible but I suppose without a decent education what can you expect?
41. Danuta Gray was appointed to the Board on 25 August 2006. Ms Gray is Chief Executive of O2 Ireland, a position she has held since 2001. Ms Gray is a graduate of the University of Leeds. She is a member of the O2 Group Board. She is a board member of Irish Permanent TSB and in August 2006 was appointed non-executive Director of Aer Lingus by the then Minister for Transport, Martin “Leech Lover” Cullen T.D. Danuta has also been appointed Chairperson to the board of children's charity Barretstown Gang Camp. Totally and utterly useless for Aer Lingus and has no business on the board. Imagine a BioPhysicist running aircraft!
42 . Finally looking at Aer Lingus report, they lose € 44.48 per passenger. They carry 823,833 passengers per month. They lose € 36,644,092 per month. They have € 439 million cash left. On their own figures they therefore have 12 months left to bankruptcy, i.e. November 2010. Q.E.D. And they do not allow for the € 370 million deficit in the pension fund.The pensiion fund deficit is being totally ignored and the current board have a duty to deal with it. In my view Aer Lingus is trading insolvently due to this alone and the Directors are now on notice of this situation. Do nothing and they can be held personally liable.
43 Michael Johns was appointed to the Board on 25 August 2006. He is a solicitor and has been a partner at Ashurst, solicitors since 1987. Mr.. Johns is a graduate of Oxford University. He has extensive experience in the areas of commercial, corporate, corporate finance and energy law. He has provided legal counsel to the Eircom employee share ownership trust since 2001. Knows nothing about airlines. He is also one of those responsible for the appalling cash burnup. A good reason to fire him.
44. Francis Hackett was appointed to the Board on 9 February 2006. Mr. Hackett is a solicitor of twenty years standing and is currently the Managing Partner of O'Donnell Sweeney Eversheds, Solicitors. Mr. Hackett has extensive experience in commercial law, corporate law, regulatory, telecommunications and information technology law. I quote “He has extensive experience of regulatory advice having been Corporate Counsel in Eircom PLC during its transition from being a monopoly service provider to a regulated utility in a competitive market place.” I seem to remember Eircom screwing the Irish people into the ground perhaps like he is now helping screw Aer Lingus into the ground. He has overseen the burning of € 600 million in cash. He has no business on the board. He has been a Director of Aer Lingus Group PLC since February 9, 2006.
45. Colin Hunt was appointed to the Board on 31 January 2008. Dr Hunt is Division Director at Macquarie Capital and has responsibility for the firm's corporate advisory activities in Ireland. Previously he served as Special Adviser to the Ministers for Finance and Transport of Ireland. An economist by profession, he was Research Director and Chief Economist at Goodbody Stockbrokers, Head of Trading Research at Bank of Ireland Group Treasury and a country risk analyst at NatWest. He is a graduate of University College Cork and Trinity College Dublin. I wonder how he got on the board. He is obviously intelligent but knows nothing about airlines and dare I say it was because of his Fianna Fail connections. As special adviser on economic policy to Cowen, Hunt played a key role in drawing up Fianna Fail's election platform. We do not need another ex-bank executive.
46. Anne Mills was appointed to the Board on 22 March 2004. Ms Mills is a Chartered Civil Engineer and is currently a senior engineer in Dublin City Council. She is a graduate of University College Galway. She was responsible for the multi million euro re-development of O'Connell Street in Dublin City. Mills is Dublin City Council's senior engineer in charge of the redevelopment of Dublin city centre. She is also a member of the Building Regulations Advisory Body. What a load of codswallop qualifications for the board of Aer Lingus. What on earth is she doing on the board? Totally and utterly useless.
47. Thomas Moran was appointed to the Board on 25 August 2006. Mr. Moran has served as Chairman of the Board of Mutual of America Life Insurance Company since June 2005. He also was its President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Moran is a graduate of Manhattan College and has extensive business experience and is a member of the Taoiseach's Economic Advisory Board, as well as the Boards of the Irish Chamber of Commerce in the USA and the Ireland-United States Council for Commerce and Industry, Inc. Knows nothing about airlines, of course, a key qualification for the Aer Lingus Board but does know the Taoiseach!
48 Mr. Leslie Buckley was appointed to the Board as Non-Executive Director of the Company on 18 May 2009. Mr.. Buckley was nominated for appointment to the Board by the Minister for Finance and will be designated as a “Minister's Nominee” in accordance with the Company's Articles of Association. Its called Ministerial cronyism.
49. Mr. Buckley is a founding director of Digicel a telecommunications group. Previously, Mr.. Buckley was involved in the start-up of Esat Telecom group plc and Esat Digifone Limited and held the position of acting chief operating officer of Esat Telecom during 1996 and 1997. Mr. Buckley established his own consultancy business in 1990 and was retained on a number of key public and private sector appointments.In March 2009 Mr.. Buckley was appointed to the Board of Independent News & Media PLC. I think they are going broke right now. Ideal experience for Aer Lingus. Leslie's energy and management skills were recognized by the Irish Minister for Health who appointed Buckley to the Commission for Nursing in 1997. Maybe he is good at Nursing!
50. Leslie established his own consultancy business in 1990 and has since been retained on key public and private sector projects, including the reconstruction of Waterford Crystal plc, the reconstruction and sale of Irish Steel plc, consulting work with Irish Rail and the restructuring of Aer Lingus, Ireland's national airline. Now lets see. Waterford Crystal are gone broke. Irish Steel is gone broke. Irish Rail is broke. And Aer Lingus is going broke. How could any director have a more suitable pedigree?
Now lets look at the Senior Management Biographies
51. Sean Coyle is a chartered accountant and graduate of Management Science from Trinity College, Dublin. He was appointed Chief Financial Officer and a member of the Board in August 2008. He was the only one with any experience but has gone now.
52. Enda Corneille was appointed Corporate Affairs Director in November 2007, with responsibility for internal and external communications including media relations, lying to the media, Corporate and Government affairs together with all aspects of Aer Lingus branding, marketing and customer service. He also has responsibility for communications within the Group's Investor Relations. Mr.. Corneille has over 20 years experience with Aer Lingus and has held a number of positions including Commercial Director with responsibilities for developing the Airline's sales and marketing capabilities with an emphasis on the continued development of the Airline's website, aerlingus.com. As commercial director the figures speak for themselves and I presume he takes the credit for the disasters on aerlingus.com as well as the appalling yield management system.
53. Niall Walsh, a chartered accountant, was appointed Group Procurement, IT and Property Executive in 1994. In March 1996, he became Services Director and in February 2001 overall responsibility for cost management was added to his portfolio. He was appointed Deputy Chief Executive in March 2006. Mr. Walsh assumed the role of Chief Operating Officer in April 2009 with responsibility for all of the Group's ground and flight operations, procurement and airport bases. His primary focus is on operating excellence and customer service delivery. I suppose the groups chaotic ground handling and poor on time record can be credited to him. and the fact that Aer Lingus cost per km is almost twice that of Ryanair.
54. Stephen Kavanagh, Corporate Planning Director and Head of Long Haul Operations is a graduate of University College Dublin and joined the Company in 1988. He undertook a number of analytical and management roles in fleet scheduling and business planning departments before being appointed Operations Planning Manager in 2003 with responsibility for the integration of network, aircraft and crew planning, and a focus on improved productivity and asset utilisation. Mr. Kavanagh was appointed to the senior management team in March 2006. His primary focus is on the sustainable profitability of the long haul business (Stop laughing!). In addition, he has responsibility for the Group's cargo operations, managing and development of strategic alliances and for the Group's resource planning process. Its nice to know who is responsible for the current longhaul debacle as well as the € 69 million loss incurred last year in long haul alone.
55 . Michael Grealy, was appointed Director of Human Resources and Organizational Change in September 2009. Formerly Head of Group Human Resources and a member of the Group Executive Committee of The Bank of Ireland, Mr. Grealy has extensive experience at a senior level in human resources within major industries in Ireland, France and the US. As a former Head of Group HR in Bank of Ireland (2001-2006), Michael was a key member of the senior management team and was central to the alignment of the Group's HR strategy with the Group's business strategy. Ye Gods! Another guy who helped Bank of Ireland to the wall. He probably invented the fire your cabin staff by text strategy. Some guy!
And these are the geniuses that have managed to burn through some € 600 million, yes million, in the last few years and lose € 69 million, yes million, in the last six months. And nobody has been fired, nobody has been replaced. The terrible thing is that the Board, other than Sean Coyle, have no experience of any scheduled airline, and the executive team have never worked for any other airline so have no outside experience. Quite apart from the fact that they have been in their positions so long they are totally ingrained with working for a loss making airline. It is essential to go outside the country for board members and management with international airline experience. It should be absolutely clear that the present lot have no chance of saving Aer Lingus.
26. MILLIONS WASTED ON OLD TERMINAL AND BOARD DO NOTHING.
It appears that the Board have made a decision to demolish the old terminal - worth 90 million - because they will not allow the old terminal to be used by Ryanair . What sort of raving lunatics are running Cork Airport when they make a decision like that? It is, I understand to become the management car park, believe it or not! I tell you, I understand perfectly how Alice felt! And they are paying over one million euro per annum to heat the old, empty - other than Pat Keohanes office - terminal. It would make an ideal conference centre. Why don't they use it as such? Or else let Ryanair use it. At least it does not have 61 steps to the aircraft! Actually 0 steps.
But what has to be crazy is that not one member of the Board has thought up one single idea as to what to do with the terminal and they leave it derelict at huge cost to the taxpayer rather than make use of it. Gerry Walsh and his ignorant mob have a lot to answer for and the fact that they would let it fall down rather than allow Ryanair use it is not one of the acceptable answers.
27. GERRY WALSH, PAT KEOHANE AND THE BOARD THINK THEY ARE NOT ACCOUNTABLE.
One of the more interesting things of the whole Cork airport fiasco is that Gerry Walsh, Pat Keohane and their board think they do not have to account for their actions to anyone and they can do what they like with the taxpayers money. They are very, very, wrong. The useless Oireachtas Treansport Committee has no interest because it does not want to get involved even though it is its duty. But since it would show the perfidy of Batt O'Keeffe and Miceal Martin and the other Cork Fianna Fail politicians that would never do, would it? We blame the bishops but this lot would leave everyone far behind in the “TO HELL WITH THE PUBLIC RACE” . Very, very sad!
28. CORK AIRPORT PARKING FEES TWICE THOSE OF DUBLIN AIRPORT.WHY?
Cork Airport parking fees are now extortion and twice those of Dublin. It was Dublin who by the way authorised this and they never even told, much less consulted, the Cork people before bringing in the current charges. An interesting sideline is that off airport parking has now started at half the current charges and soon the Airport will have another serious loss of revenue. And again not a peep out of the Cork Board.
This and the other self inflicted disasters would indicate that Irish Public Companies have an unstoppable desire to commit commercial suicide and bankrupt their companeis. They certainly are succeeding.What I cannot understand is how the Boards go along with it 100%. I would have expected at least one intelligent member on each board and that he or she would kick but nothing happens.
Fortunately an enterprising gentleman, calling himself “Airport View Parking” (Tel. 087-634-5114) has started car parking just a few yards from the airport gate, complete with shuttle bus, and it is only half the Cork Airport charge, namely € 5 per day against the airport € 9.50. That saves € 25 per week and you even get your car washed! Just you watch and Cork Airport will halve their charges shortly.
Is it not great that someone has finally had the courage to take them on and show them up. I invite everyone to use his services and lets empty the airport car parks.
29. LEAVE ARRIVALS HALL AND MOUNTAIN CLIMB TO YOUR CAR.
Anyone who leaves their car in the long term car park near the hotel is faced with either a long walk or a mountain to climb when they leave the arrivals hall because nobody put in a path or steps to the car park. One has to first climb the small hill and then the go down the other side and then climb again up the big hill. I can assure readers that this not easy and the grass can be very slippy especially if you have two bags in your hands. It would take very little to solve this problem and yet nobody does or will do it. Why not?
30. THE AIRPORT SIGNS AND ROAD MARKINGS.
If you look at the road markings entering the airport you would wonder if they were not thought up by a right hand drive specialist. They are totally and utterly bewildering and the road markings as you turn down to the terminal were obviously designed by a four year old Is it beyond the wit of our management to do the job right? As you approach you see a sign for the terminal but the road is marked with “Do not go here” white lines and the actual lane is invisible. What is so wrong with the obvious answer to let traffic go down where the hatched white lines are now? But that would be too easy, would it not?
And then when you get there, “NO PARKING” are everywhere. Why do they need 84 cones?. Surely it is an admission to the world at large of the ineptitude of management. Lets at least keep it in Cork that our management is inept but don't tell the world! But it is totally stupid to put up signs and then throw 84 cones all over the place. Its the taxi signs all over again.
The Aer Lingus AGM was held on June 5, 2009. and Noel e-voting machine Dempsey actually voted to approve the exorbitant unwarranted fees payable to Aer Lingus Directors. He and the rest of the cabinet still do not get it and to judge from the election results and their no change attitude they still don't get it. They are fouling things up and Aer Lingus is going to go out of business which will be a national tragedy and they still do nothing.
Colum Guinness Peat went broke Barrington made some amazing statements. He said they had cut their cloth to reflect the current environment. A LIE. He then declined to give any details of what he was doing or when their next great plan would be ready, presumably because he had not a clue. The airline is going down the tubes and he has not even an idea of when he expects a plan to be ready! “I think Aer Lingus is fine”, he said. He then opposed lowering the fees of the fat cat directors which Noel e-voting machine Dempsey supported. He further went on to say that Ryanair was destroying shareholder value. He must be stark raving mad. The shares were € 2.80 not so long ago and are now 65 cent and he has the gall to blame Ryanair. The only person to blame is himself and his miserable, planless, clueless board of overpaid cronies.
He then made a statement that unions have not been even consulted on upcoming cost reduction numbers AND HE DOES NOT INTEND CONSULTING THEM. Does he really believe that the unions want Aer Lingus to go to the wall? Can anyone be that stupid. He should have the unions in right now. They have idea also, you know! He also said that he would sell the airline to foreigners. Sell our national heritage to foreigners and have the airline crewed by bloody foreigners? We, the Irish do not want that and neither do the unions. Barrington is a stupid ignorant man trying to line his own pockets at the expense of the Irish taxpayer and would sell the nations birthright for a pittance to anyone provided they make a few bob on the way. It is a national scandal that he is allowed get away with it and for that matter where are the worker directors? Not a peep out of them because they all agree also.
Lets look at his record. 21% drop in long haul passengers. Brilliant! Long haul load factor 66.3%. Brilliant. Short haul load factor down almost three percent. Brilliant! Cash dropping at about �20 million per month. Brilliant! A fifth aircraft going to Gatwick to lose even more money. Brilliant! May I point out that Ryanair load factor is well over 80 percent. I wonder what would happen if they made Michael O'Leary Chief Executive! The rest of the board would be gone for starters saving € 500,000 per annum!
To put it bluntly the only thing one can conclude from yesterdays AGM is that neither the Chairman nor his fellow directors have a clue as to the real figures, have less an idea of where to go now and are awaiting a new Chief Executive, of which he has not a clue who it will be or when the guy is coming. He equally with his board admit they are incapable of deciding on the chief executive themselves and just pray the airline is not broke when the guy arrives. And our national heritage is in these peoples hands. God help us all!
And finally, he has no shares in Aer Lingus, and does not intend buying any! That says it all. Actions speak louder than words!
June 4, 2009. Noel Dempsey instead of voting the over 50% shares, which he was entitled to vote at the Aer Lingus EGM, has decided instead to put the fox to be in charge of the henhouse and handed over his voting power to failed Chief Executive Colm Barrington which is a total derogation of his duty to the taxpayer and his way of telling the taxpayer to go and get stuffed.
As Michael O'Leary said yesterday Dempsey says Aer Lingus must cut costs, yet he is supporting its fat cat crony directors in stuffing their pockets with € 30,000 each per annum for doing nothing. But what is very interesting is that his officials have accelerated plans to re-nationalise the airline, as the inevitable approaches.
Michael O'Leary is absolutely right in his criticism of Aer Lingus and inside figures revealed to me show that it lost a massive € 14.4 million alone in April. The answer to all this is that the commercial department is making a right mess of it. They have adopted a policy of charging up to four times what Ryanair charge and that is not even a competition.
So it is a safe bet that at todays meeting spineless Dempsey will not even be represented but as in the case of the banks will sell the Irish taxpayer down the swanee, once again!
June 2, 2009. Once upon a time, an Irish National Airline and their upstart counterparts from the O'Leary's decided to have a competitive boat race on the River Liffey. Both teams practised long and hard to reach their peak performance. On the big day they were as ready as ready could be.
O'Learys won by a mile.
Afterwards the Airline Directors became very discouraged by the loss and morale sagged. One of them wanted to sue O'Learys for damages due to making an apparent fool of them. They had found an obscure act which would enable a prosecution to be brought against the O'Learys team leader who had been alleged to keep passing derogatory comments on the performance of the National Airline Directors which information was likely to cause the Airline Team Directors anxiety and distress.
Senior Directors decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found and a special project team, headed by a Barrington Chairman was set up to investigate the problem and recommend appropriate action.
Their conclusion: The problem was that the O'Leary Team had eight people rowing and one person steering. The National team had one person rowing and eight people steering.
The report was sent to the Minister for e-voting machines, who specialises in keeping his head in the sand, ostrich like, and naturally as a consequence his ass in the air. O wa ta na c is or is it has? The Minister was so upset he hired expensive consultants to do a study of the teams structure. To ensure the maximum benefit the team included mostly cronies – in this case otherwise known as directors – as is normal under the Irish system. Millions of pounds and several months later they concluded there were too many people steering and not enough rowing.
As a result to prevent losing to the O'Learys the next year the team structure was changed to One “Executive Chairman”, four “Senior Directors”, two “Steering Worker Directors” and one Steering Financial Manager. A performance and appraisal system was setup to give the person rowing the boat more incentive to work harder and become a key performer. He would hence forth be called the “Titanic Chairman” . “We must give him empowerment and enrichment. That ought to do it”. Everybody praised the new system so that they could keep their jobs.
Next year the O'Learys won by two miles.
The Chairman sent the rower to Portmagee for poor performance, sold off any aircraft which earned revenue, cancelled all capital investment for new equipment and halted development of a new business model. He awarded high performance awards to the consultants and distributed the money saved to senior management.
Subsequently the airline shares tanked from € 3 per share to 60 cent, the Minister kept his ass in the air and the airline went broke.
34. NO ACCOUNTS FOR CORK AIRPORT
The 2008 accounts for the Dublin Airport Authority are now being prepared by Price Waterhouse Cooper. They are a fraud and absolutely not transparent and totally meaningless. No separate figures are given for Cork or Shannon Airport. Cork Airport lost € 4.6 million last year and will lose about € 10 million this year. Even worse, all the Board members do not receive any accounts for each airport so have no means of making rational decisions. Here we have taxpayers money being poured down the drain and they do not even feel they have to produce figures.Not one Director has asked for or received audited figures. They do not want to know. All the board members want is their € 12,000+ per annum. If they got rid of the boards at Cork and Shannon Airport the taxpayer would save over € 950,000 per annum.
35. MISSING PERSON
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?
BELIEVED TO BE CHAIRMAN OF THE AIRPORT BUT NEVER SEEN BY ANYONE.
IF YOU SEE THIS MAN, DO NOT APPROACH HIM AS HE HATES PEOPLE
DON'T WRITE TO HIM EITHER AS HE NEVER ANSWERS LETTERS.
INSTEAD CALL 087-240-555-0
2. Who is the Loopy One? Cork Airport Duty Free Bag Designer is a candidate!
3. Who is Lying About Cork Airport Charges?
4. Cork Airport Passenger Fees double.
5. Cork Airport Shop Crippled. Airport Board do nothing.
6. Transport Minister Noel Dempsey Screws the Taxpayer.
7. Cork Airport Screws the Elderly, the Disabled and the Infirm.
8. You will fucking Use the Stairs Like Everyone Else!
9. 32 Minutes Walking Around the Ramp - Cork Airport Security a Farce!
10. John Cronin, Aer Lingus Station Manager Retires.
11. Yankee Go Home! We do not want you in Cork!
12. Cork Airport Board decide to cut forty jobs!
13. Cork Airport Board to spend € 1.4 million moving wall!
14. Blame the Taxi Drivers!
15. We want leaks!
16. As the Bishops and Cardinals Lie so also do the Cork Airport Board!
17. How Cork Airport is Currently Run.
18. The Incompetent Cork Airport Board rotten biographies.
19. The More Incompetent Dublin Airport Authority Cork Airport Board rotten biographies.
20. The Incompetent Shannon Airport Board rotten biographies
21. Cork Airport Board Try to sell land to Fianna Fail crony developers.
22. Aer Arann and why they are going broke.
23. Cork Airport Baggage Hall Filthy and a Health Hazard.
24. Aer Lingus and why they are going broke.
25. The Board of Aer Lingus.
26. Millions Wasted on Old Terminal!
27. Gerry Walsh and Pat Keohane and Cork Airport Board think they are not accountable!
28. Cork Airport Parking Fees TWICE those of Dublin!
29. Mountain Climbing to get to your car at Cork Airport!
30. Lunatic Airport Signs and Markings!
31. Aer Lingus AGM a disgrace.
32. Noel E-voting machines Dempsey Gives Two Fingers to taxpayer.
33. A Salutary Lesson!
34. No Accounts for Cork Airport.
35. Chairman of Cork Airport Missing. Please help Find Him!
Is the media out to trip you up? (Definitely as they want the truth!)
Coping with nerves (They already have some nerve!)
Making a positive start (Yep, they have been going backwards up to this!)
Taking control (Now that is a good idea!)
Handling interruptions (What interruptions, they never meet anyone?)
Getting your message across (They sure don't!)
Being memorable (With this lot, not much chance!)
Dealing with crossfire (Pity some of it would not get them!)
Giving quotable quotes (They can't even talk!)
Having the last word (I always get that!)
31. AER LINGUS AGM A NATIONAL DISGRACE
32. NOEL E-VOTING MACHINE DEMPSEY GIVES TWO FINGERS TO TAXPAYER
33. A SALUTARY LESSON
ANSWERS TO NAME OF GERRY WALSH
(HIS € 12,000 PER ANNUM TO DO NOTHING IS MAILED TO HIM)
BELIEVES HE DOES NOT HAVE TO MEET THE PUBLIC OR HIS CORK AIRPORT STAFF.
WHO DESPERATELY WANT TO FIND AND MEET HIM.
