Belfast City Airport could have closed after Ryanair’s exit
28.01.12
Ryanair's decision to stop flying from Belfast City Airport could have seen it close, the Belfast Telegraph reports its boss has said. Brian Ambrose’s comments came during an interview with the newspaper in which he stressed the importance of the budget airline to the airport and to local economy.
Belfast City has plans to build an extension that would increase the current length of the runway by 470m to 2,299m for take-off and 2,059m for landing — but those plans have been in limbo for three-and-a-half years. Ryanair pulled out of the airport 14 months ago after a public inquiry into the proposed runway extension suffered a further delay.
Mr Ambrose said: ‘When you lose a third of your business overnight, you could have put the lights out here and paid off 1,500 people. At one stage it was as serious as that. City centre businesses said they noticed a marked downturn when Ryanair pulled out too. They said it had a massive impact (on the economy); you literally knew the weekend that it stopped.’
He blames a failure by the Department of the Environment’s (DoE) Planning Service to clear the way for a runway extension for stemming economic growth for over three years. But Environment Minister Alex Attwood said the airport has been dragging its feet with regard to providing information vital to a public inquiry into the runway extension.
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