LETTER: Three flights weekly to US better than none!

SIR – In reply to Archon, your recent article – Where are our flights to Boston and Cork? – was a classic. Littered with factual errors and abusive undertones, it did nothing but mislead readers. 

I would encourage you to cast you eye over the EU Open Skies agreement, which is a legally-binding agreement between the US and the EU. If NAI’s end game had been to set up a base in Dublin, then they could have done so without the need to include both Cork and Shannon. 

Are you suggesting that NAI never wanted to fly from Cork to the US and, if so, are you suggesting that there are operating three weekly flights now as a decoy? That’s a very expensive decoy for a business whose operation depends on a low-cost model.

From the outset, you seem to have overlooked one key fact. We now have three weekly flights to the US from Cork airport. That is three more than we did last month. Whilst I am not an economist and defer to your logic on this, I would suggest that three is always better than none?  

How many flights Dublin and Shannon got is a moot point, the most important thing being that we now have direct transatlantic flights from Cork.

The bottom line here is that these three new routes will create jobs in Cork, directly in the Airport but also indirectly in tourism, servicing the routes and within the wider Cork business community. I make no apology to you for fighting for new jobs, investment and connectivity for Cork.

Perhaps a holiday in the US would help to temper the obvious anger you have towards me; flights are only €69 at the moment after all – from Cork.

Deirdre Clune, MEP,

Cork.