Belfast City could have closed after Ryanair exit
28.01.12
Ryanair's decision to stop flying from Belfast City could have seen the airport close, the Belfast Telegraph reports its boss, Brian Ambrose, said. His 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 would like to build an extension to increase the current length of the runway by 470m to 2,299m for take-off and 2,059m for landing. However, the 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 extension suffered a further delay.
Mr Ambrose said: ‘When you lose a third of your business overnight, you could have to 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 they stopped.’
He blames a failure by the Department of the Environment’s (DoE) Planning Service to clear the way for a runway extension for holding back economic growth for over 3 years. But Environment Minister Alex Attwood said the airport has been dragging its feet with providing information vital to a public inquiry into the runway extension.
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