O'Leary urges planners to ignore Belfast City Airport runway protests
30.11.07
Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary has called on planning authorities to ignore the 'mewling and puking' of local residents over expansion plans at Belfast City Airport. He said it was vital that plans by the airport's owners to extend the runway by 600m were implemented in order to enable Ryanair to open up new direct services from Europe.
The outspoken chief executive made his controversial comments at a First Trust business breakfast at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast yesterday. He urged the business community to press for the runway to be lengthened in order to help boost tourism.
He said: 'We would like to do more and base more aircraft here and are working with Brian Ambrose of Belfast City Airport to get the runway extended. Let's get the planning permission through, and let's ignore the mewling and puking from local residents which is a load of nonsense. We operate quieter aircraft and do not fly through the night, so nobody is going to have to suffer a noise penalty.'
The runway length means that Ryanair's modern 189-seat Boeing 737-800 aircraft are restricted to carrying only 140 passengers on outbound flights from Belfast. Mr O'Leary pledged that if the runway was extended Ryanair would launch direct flights from Belfast to a host of Continental destinations, including Brussels, Paris, Rome, Milan, Madrid, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Barcelona and Marseilles.
Mr O'Leary predicted that Ryanair would carry 750,000 passengers over the first full year of operations on its four flights from City Airport, which started in October. He revealed that this month it is achieving a load factor of 75% on the route to London Stansted which Ryanair took over from Air Berlin.
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