Ireland’s Transport Minister just had a meeting with Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary over the annual cap of 32 million passengers for Dublin’s airport, and came out with a proposed solution torn from Ryanair’s long-time playbook.
Why not, the minister wondered get around the cap by directing more passengers to airports at Shannon and Cork? And why not draw passengers to them by labeling them Dublin, too? James Lawless, the minister, did say that wasn’t his preferred solution—he’d rather raise the cap at Dublin.
But, aside from distance—Shannon is almost 150 miles away—it would just follow Ryanair’s historic pattern of flying to almost-nearby and cheaper airports such as Beauvais for Paris, Girona for Barcelona, Treviso for Venice, and Hahn for Frankfurt, all with the name of the intended city tacked on to the distant airport.
Not limited to Ryanair, of course: Airports play the game all the time. For years, Florida’s Melbourne listed itself as Orlando, Manchester, NH recently renamed itself Manchester-Boston and in California, there’s still a war on between San Francisco’s SFO and the newly-renamed San Francisco Bay Oakland airport, OAK.
